Preamble

The House met at half-past Two o'clock

PRAYERS

[MR. SPEAKER in the Chair]

PRIVATE BUSINESS

SELECTION

Ordered,
That the Standing Order of 30th June 1983 relating to the nomination of members of the Committee of Selection be amended, by leaving out Sir Philip Holland and inserting Sir Reginald Eyre.—[Mr. Donald Thompson.]

WESTERN ISLES ISLANDS COUNCIL (KALLIN PIER, HARBOUR JURISDICTION) ORDER CONFIRMATION BILL

Considered; to be read the Third time tomorrow.

Oral Answers to Questions — DEFENCE

Non-verifiable Nuclear System

Mr. D. E. Thomas: asked the Seretary of State for Defence what is the policy of Her Majesty's Government with regard to the United States Administration's planned deployment of a non-verifiable nuclear system; and if he will make a statement.

The Minister of State for the Armed Forces (Mr. John Stanley): Before answering question No. 1 it may be helpful to the House if I say that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State regrets that he has had to make a visit to Scandinavia this week to coincide with an important NATO exercise.
I am not aware of any planned United States deployment of a nuclear system that could not be made satisfactorily verifiable.

Mr. Thomas: Does the Minister agree that the only successful arms limitation negotiator of the United States, Ambassador Gerard Smith, has said that the proposed deployment of the sea-launched cruise missile system will pose a major threat to the possibility of verification? Does he not accept that, at a time when the Government are making great play of the need for opening a new dialogue with the Soviet Union, this deployment should immediately be halted by the United States?

Mr. Stanley: The problems of verification depend very much on what the owners of a particular system are prepared to do by way of inspection and disclosure. With regard to the deployment of the ship-launched cruise missile, I would make the point to the hon. Gentleman that it is certainly apparent that the Soviet Union is likely to have an operational capability for ground-launched, air-launched and sea-launched cruise missiles in the relatively near future.

Mr. Boyes: Is the Minister aware that I have received a letter from him stating that the cruise missiles at Greenham common are under the command of an American colonel, Colonel Miller, named in the letter, and that the British forces are answerable to that colonel? Is it not ridiculous that British forces are answerable to a United States colonel, and does it not show that the Americans have complete control of the ground-launched cruise missiles at Greenham common?

Mr. Stanley: If the hon. Gentleman chose to quote the full text of the letter that I sent him, he would observe that the arrangements to which he has referred are jointly agreed between the two Governments, but I am delighted that he managed to make a visit to Greenham common, and I am only sorry that he was not there for the full briefing, which might have helped him even more.

Mr. Denzil Davies: To revert to the original question, is it not a fact that the United States is embarking upon a massive deployment of sea-launched cruise missiles? Is not one of the problems with cruise missiles that it is not possible to tell whether they carry nuclear warheads or non-nuclear warheads, and that that is where the verification problem arises?

Mr. Stanley: The point that the right hon. Gentleman makes applies to any dual capable system, of which a great many have been deployed for a long time. As to the United States deployment of cruise missiles, they are all of nuclear capability.

Mr. Boyes: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: I shall take points of order afterwards.

Recruitment

Mr. Chapman: asked the Secretary of State for Defence what are the numbers of armed services personnel employed in career information and recruiting offices; and what are the total number of man-years involved.

Mr. David Atkinson: asked the Secretary of State for Defence how many recruitment centres exist for each service.

The Under-Secretary of State for Defence Procurement (Mr. John Lee): The services have the following careers information offices: Royal Navy 24, Army 134, Royal Air Force 16, Royal Navy and Army combined 9, Royal Navy and Royal Air Force combined 17, Army and Royal Air Force combined 22, and tri-service 11. During 1982–83 the armed forces employed a total of 1,144 service personnel in their careers information offices, involving a total of 1,085·5 man-years.

Mr. Chapman: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that information. On reflection, does he agree that, unless there are exceptional circumstances, all services recruiting and information officers and personnel engaged therein should be involved in tri-service information and recruitment? Will he confirm that if that were done considerable and sensible economies could be made on the £40 million spent on recruiting and information in the previous financial year?

Mr. Lee: It would be fair to say that we have not made as much progress in this area as we would have wished. We have about 59 careers information offices on a


combined or tri-service basis. When it is practical or economical to do so we shall move towards the tri-service approach, which would obviously produce some savings.

Mr. Atkinson: Have my hon. Friend and his Department undertaken feasibility studies with the Department of Employment into the practicability of establishing recruitment offices in jobcentres?

Mr. Lee: There is close liaison between jobcentres and careers information offices, but, to judge from the studies that we have carried out, we do not believe that it would be practical to place our careers information officers in jobcentres.

Sir Hector Monro: Does my hon. Friend agree that not only do careers information officers perform an excellent recruiting job, but that they are a valuable link between the services and the community, and that frequently officers and NCOs play a prominent part in local events?

Mr. Lee: My hon. Friend is absolutely correct.

Surface-to-surface Guided Weapons

Mr. Sackville: asked the Secretary of State for Defence, in view of the request for new bids for a ship-to-ship missile for the Royal Navy, if he now expects to meet the original time scale laid down for fitting armaments during the construction of type 23 frigates.

Mr. Stern: asked the Secretary of State for Defence whether he took into account potential damage to export prospects of the Sea Eagle family of weapons when deciding to call for rebids for the Royal Navy ship-launched weapons by 15 February.

Mr. Lee: During the Ministry of Defence's evaluation of the several proposals for a new surface-to-surface guided weapon for the Royal Navy, British Aerospace, one of the contenders, approached the Department last October with a revised offer on ship-launched Sea Eagle. In order to be fair to all the contenders, and to maintain the discipline of competition, we have invited the companies concerned to submit their best and final offers, incorporating any last-minute adjustments they may wish to make, so as to allow a decision to be taken in the near future. This will allow the time scale for fitting weapons to the type 23 frigate to be met.
The Ministry's evaluation of the several proposals takes into account a wide variety of factors, including sales prospects where appropriate.

Mr. Sackville: Is my hon. Friend aware of the substantial resources, both in manpower and cash, that have been invested, and continue to be invested, by British Aerospace and other contractors in meeting the deadlines set for the proposed contract? Will my hon. Friend assure the House that he will keep to a minimum the damaging delay in coming to his decision?

Mr. Lee: We shall certainly keep any delay to a minimum.

Mr. Stern: Is my hon. Friend aware that there are considerable export prospects for the family of weapons of which the ship-launched Sea Eagle forms a part? Is he further aware that at least one export customer who is seriously interested has been waiting for more than a year for the Government to make a decision on this weapon, and does he agree that that customer and the customers who will follow him will not wait for ever?

Mr. Lee: I assure my hon. Friend that all his points will be taken into account when a decision is made.

Mr. Douglas: What is the construction and ordering programme for the type 23 frigate?

Mr. Lee: Yarrow has been given the design contract, and we are hoping for an in service date of 1988 for the type 23.

Mr. Sayeed: Will my hon. Friend confirm that a decision on the ship-launched Sea Eagle will be made in the first half of 1984?

Mr. Lee: I very much hope so.

Mr. McNamara: Will the Under-Secretary of State now answer the question? What effect will the delay in deciding on the weapon system have on the time scale for the building of the vessel? Can he guarantee that the vessel will be delivered on time and that there will be no extra cost as a result of the delay?

Mr. Lee: I assure the hon. Gentleman that the delay will have no effect. We are on schedule for a 1988 in service date for the type 23.

Falkland Islands (Defence Vote)

Mr. Hoyle: asked the Secretary of State for Defence what is the total cost to date to the Defence Vote in relation to the Falklands since the Argentine invasion.

Mr. Stanley: The cost of the Falklands campaign and subsequent expenditure in 1982–83 was £780 million. For 1983–84, provision of £624 million was included in the defence budget to meet the extra cost of the Falklands garrison, the cost of replacing capital equipment lost and residual campaign costs.

Mr. Hoyle: For how long does the Minister think we can afford the Prime Minister's folly? Would it not be better to seek some settlement, preferably under United Nations auspices?

Mr. Stanley: We can afford the costs of replacing the losses of the Falklands campaign and, as the hon. Gentleman will be aware, the Government have decided to finance that by an addition to the defence budget. As for relations with Argentina, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has made it clear that, while sovereignty is not on the agenda and is not negotiable, we wish to normalise relations with Argentina, particularly in the commercial area.

Mr. Dickens: Does my hon. Friend think that it is possible to put a price on freedom and democracy? Are we not compelled to follow the road along which we are going and continue to support the people of the Falkland Islands, having fought and lost lives for those people?

Mr. Stanley: My hon. Friend, as ever, has got to the nub of the issue.

Mr. Dalyell: In answer to straightforward questions from the Merchant Navy and Airline Officers' Association, and to many questions from me in the House, about the costs of chartering ships, Ministers take refuge in "reasons of commercial confidentiality". Has not commercial confidentiality a great deal more to do with the political convenience of Ministers than with the national interest?

Mr. Stanley: The policy of successive Governments and of all Government Departments in not disclosing matters of commercial confidentiality, in the interest of the Government being able to negotiate the most favourable terms, is very long established.

Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop: Does my hon. Friend agree that the time has arrived when he should inquire of the Opposition for how many pieces of silver per head they would have sold the population of the Falklands?

Mr. Stanley: I agree with my hon. Friend. I am certain that if the Labour party had been in office the repossession of the Falklands would not have taken place.

Mr. McCusker: Is Harland and Wolff of Belfast on schedule for a successful completion of the contract which it was awarded for the Falklands dockyard?

Mr. Stanley: I do not have the details of that contract with me, but I shall write to the hon. Gentleman.

Mr. Denzil Davies: Does the Minister remember that under a Labour Government we never lost the Falkland Islands and that they were never invaded? Is he aware that if his Government had shown rather more prudence the invasion would not have taken place? [Interruption.] Do not the figures which he has given show the enormous burden which the fortress Falklands policy is placing on defence expenditure? Is he aware of the burden that that is also placing on our NATO commitment, on sea and on land? Is he further aware that, whatever our relations with Argentina, before long there will have to be a substantial reduction in the garrison on the Falkland Islands?

Mr. Stanley: As for what would have happened under a Labour Government, that is, happily, a hypothetical question, but I am certain that if the Labour party had been in office in 1982 the garrison size on the Falklands would have been exactly the same as it was when we were in office at that time. As for the costs of the garrison, I hope that we shall have the support of the right hon. Member for Llanelli (Mr. Davies) in proceeding with the strategic airfield, which will give us much more flexibility than we have now in terms of the size of the garrison.

Northern Ireland

Mr. Latham: asked the Secretary of State for Defence whether he will make a statement on recent operational successes by Her Majesty's forces in Northern Ireland in anti-terrorist activity, in support of the civil power and in conjunction with the Royal Ulster Constabulary.

The Minister of State for Defence Procurement (Mr. Geoffrey Pattie): Her Majesty's forces continue to play a vital part in helping the Royal Ulster Constabulary to enforce the rule of law and bring to justice those responsible for terrorist crime in Northern Ireland. In the period from 1 December 1983 to 6 February 1984 the Army and RUC acting jointly recovered 41 guns, some 6,000 rounds of ammunition and 426 kg of explosives. A further 321 kg of explosives were neutralised by Army specialists. Two terrorists were killed when attempting to shoot at soldiers, and over 100 people were arrested during the period and charged with terrorist crimes.

Mr. Latham: Is my hon. Friend aware that, because the troubles have been going on for so long in Northern

Ireland, there is always a danger that our service men in the Province will be forgotten back here on the mainland? Will he ensure that morale-boosting visits by, for example, the Royal Family, the Prime Minister or the Secretary of State for Defence are a regular occurrence?

Mr. Pattie: I agree entirely with my hon. Friend that it is most important that the morale-boosting visits, as he describes them, should continue, and I see no reason to doubt that that will be the case.

Mr. Maginnis: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that successes can be achieved only if our troops are properly deployed? Is he aware that our troops are deployed in small numbers along the frontier and are not being successful in stopping the movement of arms and explosives to terrorists acting within the Province?

Mr. Pattie: The figures that I gave in my main answer show that there is quite considerable success in the present deployment. The matters which the hon. Gentleman describes are for consideration jointly by the GOC and RUC.

Mr. Bill Walker: Does my hon. Friend agree that the operational success of our forces in Northern Ireland is not dissimilar from that of our forces on the Falkland Islands? If the cost of defending freedom in Northern Ireland was right, is right and will continue to be right, is it not also right on the Falklands?

Mr. Pattie: I am sure that I would wish to agree with what my hon. Friend says.

Mr. McNamara: Does the Minister share the concern of the Opposition, which I believe is shared by many in the country, about the involvement of members of the UDR from Drumadd barracks in various scheduled offences and the fact that they are now charged with them? Is his Department pursuing an inquiry into why so many of those involved in that type of offence should have come from one barracks in the six counties? Secondly, is his Department considering the rules and regulations and the rigorousness of the procedure for taking on new recruits in the UDR, so as to prevent such incidents in future?

Mr. J. Enoch Powell: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Were not the remarks of the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, North (Mr. McNamara) in breach of the sub judice rule?

Mr. Speaker: That is the case.

Mr. McNamara: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. With respect, I was careful to phrase my remarks in such a way as not to impugn any motive, but merely to ask whether it was a cause for concern that people should be charged with offences on that basis.

Mr. Speaker: Perhaps the Minister will bear that in mind when he replies.

Mr. Pattie: I shall indeed, Mr. Speaker. I shall confine myself to answering the first part of the supplementary question of the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, North (Mr. McNamara). There is no question of the Ministry of Defence instituting an inquiry, especially in the light of the sub judice requirements. I remind the House that the UDR has carried out its task with the utmost bravery, integrity and dedication over the past 13 years, and in that time 139 of its members have been callously murdered.

Defence Estimates

Mr. Kirkwood: asked the Secretary of State for Defence when he expects to present the Defence Estimates 1984.

Mr. Pattie: My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State will present his "Statement on the Defence Estimates 1984" in the spring. The exact date has yet to be decided. The presentation of Supply Estimates for 1984–85 is a matter for my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Mr. Kirkwood: I thank the Minister for that helpful and informative answer. There is speculation in the press, of which he will no doubt be aware, that the Defence Estimates will confirm that the cost of the Trident programme has increased to about £10,000 million. Is the hon. Gentleman aware that there is worry and speculation that Thursday's public expenditure White Paper will show that the defence budget after 1985–86 will be only 1 per cent. of GDP, not 3 per cent.? In the event of these two things happening, will he give the House an assurance that the conventional arms programme will not be prejudiced by the expensive Trident programme on which the Government have embarked?

Mr. Pattie: I am aware of the speculation to which the hon. Gentleman refers. I suggest that he might care to wait to see whether the speculation has any foundation.

Mr. Wilkinson: In the time between now and the spring, whenever it comes, will my hon. Friend make absolutely sure that in this year's White Paper there is proper reference to the importance of our role in the defence of Belize? In last year's White Paper there was nothing in the index and nothing in the text about Belize and mention of the place could be found only on the map in the middle of the paper.

Mr. Pattie: I am sure that we shall pay careful attention to my hon. Friend's question and ensure that the matter is given due preference in this year's Defence Estimates.

Mr. Michie: Will the Secretary of State, before he presents the defence budget, reconsider the plans to close the royal ordnance factory at Sheffield?

Mr. Pattie: That matter is not conditional upon the publication of Defence Estimates. As the hon. Gentleman has raised this matter on the Floor of the House, I shall look at it again.

Mr. Robert Atkins: Will my hon. Friend take this opportunity to deny reports in the papers that the defence budget will be increased next year by only 1 per cent., as it is clearly important that we should continue the policy of increasing the budget in real terms by 3 per cent. year after year?

Mr. Pattie: My hon. Friend must wait for the public expenditure Supply Estimates, which will be published soon.

Mr. Denzil Davies: Although we would not, of course, wish to draw the Minister of State on the Defence Estimates, what is the present estimate of the cost of Trident? Is it still £7½ billion? Is it not a fact that, whatever the estimates, there must be a further major defence review in the next few years to pay for that extravagant and useless totem pole?

Mr. Pattie: I confirm that at 1982–83 prices the figure is still £7½ billion.

Ministry of Defence Police

Mr. Dobson: asked the Secretary of State for Defence if he will now make a statement on why members of the Ministry of Defence police stopped one of the constituents of the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras while he was walking down Theobalds Road, WC1.

Mr. Pattie: The hon. Member's constituent was seen late at night apparently loitering near a car park adjacent to a Ministry of Defence building, where cars have been damaged and there have been a series of thefts. Two Ministry of Defence police officers who were passing by at the time therefore quite reasonably considered it prudent to stop and question him. He was able to explain his actions and after a search of the area had shown that no damage had been done to vehicles in the car park, he was told that no further action would be taken and that he could continue on his way.

Mr. Dobson: Conservative Members may laugh, but 19-year-old young men who have grown up in my constituency do not expect to be stopped by two men smelling of drink, pushed against a wall, questioned, searched and not shown any authority for those actions. Do those people have the authority to search someone on the public highway? Why did that search turn out to be necessary when the event took place within 50 yards of Holborn police station?

Mr. Pattie: On 19 December I wrote to the hon. Gentleman telling him that his letter to me drawing attention to that incident was being regarded and taken as an official complaint, and that the matter would be referred to the complaints board. That has been done. That board was chaired by a senior officer in the Ministry of Defence police. A report will soon be submitted to me, and I shall be writing to the hon. Gentleman in due course. In such a case it is important that Ministry of Defence police exercise maximum vigilance for the areas adjacent to the premises for which they are responsible. The hon. Gentleman's constituent might have helped his case had he not run away when he was first apprehended.

Greenham Common

Mr. Strang: asked the Secretary of State for Defence if he has any plans to visit RAF Greenham common.

Mr. Stanley: My right hon. Friend has visited Greenham common in the past and has no present plans for a further visit.

Mr. Strang: Is the Minister aware that, notwithstanding the Government's propaganda campaign, there is a clear-cut majority against the deployment of cruise missiles? Will he admit that the women of Greenham common have forced the Government to rethink their plans to deploy the missiles throughout the countryside from time to time?

Mr. Stanley: I assure the hon. Gentleman that the Government's plans for the deployment of cruise missiles are as announced and are unchanged. I believe that there


is a clear understanding that we will have a safer world by proceeding towards disarmament on a balanced basis, not on a one-sided basis.

Mr. Andrew MacKay: Is my hon. Friend aware that when our right hon. Friend next visits Greenham common he will find that the people of Berkshire have little sympathy with the so-called peace women, who they see as the unwitting allies of muggers and housebreakers in Thames valley? By their presence at the base they are diverting the police from their essential task of tackling hardened criminals.

Mr. Stanley: I assure my hon. Friend that the people of Berkshire, particularly those living immediately around Greenham common, some of whom have suffered significant reductions in the value of their houses, have shown immense restraint and moderation, as opposed to those who have been demonstrating around the base for such a long time.

Mr. Flannery: When the Minister says that the Government's policy with regard to missiles is unchanged, does that mean that the Government's policy is to keep 16 missiles at Greenham common, because they know that the vast majority of the British people are against cruise missiles and the Government are frightened to let them out around the country?

Mr. Stanley: I assure the hon. Gentleman that our policy on the deployment of cruise missiles, including off-base training, is unchanged.

Sir Geoffrey Johnson Smith: As someone who visited Greenham common with various colleagues recently, may I ask my hon. Friend to bear in mind that we were reassured by what we saw? We also considered it a matter of regret that some Opposition colleagues who accompanied us seemed to regard the visit more as a propaganda exercise than a serious study of what took place. We came to that conclusion because they attended hardly any of the briefings that were arranged for us.

Mr. Stanley: I am grateful to my hon. Friend. From the report I have heard, he and his right hon. and hon. Friends conducted themselves with tremendous seriousness during the course of that visit, in contrast to others who accompanied them.

Mr. Boyes: Is the Minister aware that we demanded to go into Greenham common because Lady Olga Maitland and some Members of Parliament had been in? We wanted to see—

Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Member must not give an explanation. The question is asking the Minister whether he will visit Greenham common.

Mr. Boyes: Is the Minister aware that following the visit of the Secretary of State for Defence — [interruptionl—some of us went there to find out for ourselves what conditions were like at the base? We did not intend to use it as a propaganda visit, but by putting cruise missiles in the base Conservative Members have allowed it to become propaganda. Is the Minister aware —[Interruption.]—that the barbed wire that has been installed inside the base is equivalent to four-inch knives and that if anyone goes near it he could have his fingers chopped off?

Mr. Speaker: Order. It is very difficult for me to hear, but I hope that the Minister has heard the question.

Mr. Stanley: I am sure that it was an instructive question, but I am afraid that I did not hear it.

Experimental Aircraft Project

Mr. Warren: asked the Secretary of State for Defence what are the costs and employment penalties to the United Kingdom of international collaboration on the development of the experimental aircraft project.

Mr. Pattie: Since the experimental aircraft programme is not an international collaborative project, I assume that my hon. Friend is referring to the future European fighter aircraft. It is too early to say what the detailed implications will be if a collaborative procurement programme is agreed, as we hope it will be. We believe that such a programme would have considerable cost advantages over a wholly national project and would also create a large number of job opportunities for British industry.

Mr. Warren: While thanking my hon. Friend for his statement on the progress of the project, may I ask him to consider that industry is reporting that proposals being drafted and tested mean that this country will be paying twice as much as it needs for half the number of jobs that we would get if we did the job on our own? Has not the time come to study the way in which our collaboration organisation should be drawn up for the future? Tornado and Jaguar showed that they created industrial competition where none existed before. Has not the time come to study this expensive system of aircraft procurement?

Mr. Pattie: My hon. Friend would not dispute that it is more costly to carry out a national programme than to carry out a collaborative one. The question is how the collaborative programme could be managed in the final analysis, and how we divide the work. I ask him to be patient and bear with us while we are going through these difficult negotiations with our potential partners.

Mr. Johnston: Would it not have been better if the question had been put the other way round and the Minister had been asked what the costs and employment penalties of not being involved might be?

Mr. Pattie: I agree with the hon. Gentleman that it is always possible to ask the question that way round. Many people working in the British aerospace industry want to see such a project go ahead. They want to get as much work as they can for themselves, which is a perfectly laudable and understandable desire, but it is generally recognised that a collaborative project holds out the best hope of getting the programme going in the first place.

Mr. Wilkinson: Notwithstanding the fact that there will, in effect, be two experimental aircraft programmes—the British one and the French ACX—does my hon. Friend agree that the important thing is that five air forces in Europe have harmonised their operational requirements, and that if their industries can get together and build that aircraft there will be a greatly enhanced degree of standardisation and inter-operability, to the benefit of the operational effectiveness of the air forces of western Europe?

Mr. Pattie: As always, my hon. Friend has correctly outlined our aim. He is also right in describing the considerable achievement reached in December, when the chiefs of air staff of the five participating nations agreed an outline European staff target.

Mr. Campbell-Savours: Should not all information about the costs of weapons systems, including this aircraft, be made public? What possible justification can the Government have for sending information about the costs to Select Committees and instructing the Select Committees not to make that information available to the general public?

Mr. Pattie: Successive Governments have followed the practice of not revealing all the details of programme costs and individual project costs. I remind the hon. Gentleman that we went further towards helping in that regard in last year's White Paper, and in the previous year, than we had gone before. However, there are good reasons for not wanting to give an undue amount of information on somewhat sensitive matters.

Mr. McNamara: Is it not true that the greater the number of nations collaborating, the more expensive the end product? With the P110, there was a figure of 55,000 jobs. The three-nation ACA produced a figure of 38,000 jobs, and now the five-nation FEFA involves 20,000 jobs or fewer. The Government, quite properly, have a responsibility to the RAF, but, equally, they have a responsibility to British industry to maintain jobs and the industrial base.

Mr. Pattie: Yes, but it has never been the Government's position that the level of the defence industrial base has to be maintained regardless of cost. We have often argued—I have done so from this Dispatch Box—for the great importance of the defence industrial base, but we have to balance the programme costs against the other considerations that the hon. Gentleman has in mind.

South Atlantic (Ships' Tours)

Mr. Soames: asked the Secretary of State for Defence what is the present average tour of duty for Her Majesty's ships in the south Atlantic.

Mr. Stanley: The present average tour of duty for Her Majesty's ships in the south Atlantic is approximately five months, including transit time.

Mr. Soames: Does my hon. Friend agree that the burden imposed by that tour of duty upon the morale of our people is intolerable, as is the burdsn on the defence budget? Does he not agree also that the sooner we can arrive at an honourable and decent agreement with the Argentines, the better it will be for this country?

Mr. Stanley: I certainly agree with my hon. Friend that, within the limits that I described earlier, we would wish to see the restoration of normal relations with the Argentines. However, I cannot agree that the burden is intolerable or that there are difficulties for morale. I speak as one who has visited a number of ships in the south Atlantic. We have basic defence obligations to discharge to the Falkland Islanders and, regrettably, there has as yet been no formal cessation of hostilities in the area.

Mr. Douglas: Will the Minister confirm that he is talking about the surface fleet? Will he disclose the tour of duty of an SSN? Moreover, will he concede that the present tour of duty, especially for frigates, represents an unsatisfactory burden and is bad deployment in relation to our NATO obligations?

Mr. Stanley: I cannot, for reasons which I hope the House will understand, give details of the operational deployment of submarines. These vessels are still assigned to NATO. They are somewhat further removed than they would be in the Mediterranean or the eastern Atlantic, but we deploy ships equal distances away in, for example, the far east from time to time.

Animal Experiments

Mr. Tony Banks: asked the Secretary of State for Defence what animals are used for testing the wound-effects of ammunition in the United Kingdom; and where the tests take place.

Mr. Lee: Although alternative means are used wherever possible, some experiments are conducted on animals to assist improvement in the treatment of wounds. Various species have been used. All animals used are deeply anaesthetised. The experiments are conducted at the chemical defence establishment, Porton Down.

Mr. Banks: Will the Minister, who has just given an unpleasant and disturbing answer in terms of its content, if not its delivery, say how many animals are used—perhaps giving figures for last year—and what species are involved?

Mr. Lee: With respect, I am not prepared to give specific information. Of about 4 million experiments on animals which are conducted in the United Kingdom annually, the Ministry of Defence conducts about 10,000. The vast majority of them relate to work to ensure that our forces are adequately protected from chemical or biological attack.

Miss Fookes: Will my hon. Friend note that many of those who are interested in animal welfare find these tests particularly repulsive? Will he further note that I regard his answer as evasive in the extreme?

Mr. Lee: I am sorry about that. No one derives any pleasure from authorising an experiment of this type, but we believe that they are essential. The work has made a valuable contribution to the treatment of wound injuries and aided post-operative recovery for civilians and service personnel.

Mr. Merlyn Rees: Is it not the case that the Home Office, which has the responsibility, as the Minister pointed out, for by far the largest number of experiments, gives the full facts that the Ministry of Defence seems not to wish to give?

Mr. Lee: That may well be so.

Mr. Crouch: Is my hon. Friend aware that many of us are prepared to defend the use of animals in experiments to save lives and to reduce pain? Will he take on board the fact that many of us are deeply disturbed by what has been revealed today? Is he aware that using animals to determine pain and illness is the very reverse of what we have always tried to defend with regard to animal experiments?

Mr. Lee: I shall take my hon. Friend's point on board.

Mr. McNamara: Is the Minister aware that what he has said has disgusted many elements in the House, particularly as he is not prepared to say that animals are involved, in what types of experiment and to what extent?


If we believe, as many of us do, that there are occasions when animals must be experimented upon to save life, improve medicines and so on, we can only justify that belief by having the most open supply of information. He must tell us the numbers of animals involved, their species and the types of experiments for which they were used.

Mr. Lee: I stand by my answers.

Mr. Wiggin: Does my hon. Friend agree that the record of our medical services during the Falklands war has never been surpassed in the history of warfare and that, unhappily, it is necessary to do research of this type to ensure that human suffering is minimised in such circumstances?

Mr. Lee: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that observation.

Gurkha Soldiers

Mr. Neil Thorne: asked the Secretary of State for Defence if he has any plans to vary the number of Gurkha soldiers serving in the British Army.

Mr. Stanley: The size of all formations in the Army is kept under continuous review, but we have no proposals to vary the size of the Brigade of Gurkhas.

Mr. Thorne: As we approach the end of the lease on the Hong Kong New Territories in 1997, can my hon. Friend assure me that alternative training arrangements will be made for the Gurkhas, if that need should arise? Will adequate training facilities be provided for the Gurkhas, who have supported us so well throughout their history, over the past 150 years? Can my hon. Friend assure the House that that link will not be lost?

Mr. Stanley: I assure my hon. Friend that we shall pay close attention to training facilities for the Gurkhas. I fully endorse the tribute paid to them. Recently I had the pleasure of seeing them in an excellent operational role in Belize.

Oral Answers to Questions — PRIME MINISTER

Engagements

Ql. Mr. Canavan: asked the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Tuesday 14 February.

The Lord Privy Seal and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. John Biffen): I have been asked to reply.
My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister attended the funeral of President Andropov in Moscow this morning. She will be meeting General Secretary Chernenko this afternoon.

Mr. Canavan: If the Tory Government are really serious about freedom of expression for the media, why are they using political pressure to twist Alasdair Milne's arm? If the Tory party is serious about denouncing all support for racism within its ranks, will the Leader of the House denounce the 105 Tory Members of Parliament who signed early-day motion 485 supporting the English rugby tour of South Africa, which is completely contrary to the Government's official policy of supporting the Gleneagles agreement?

Mr. Wilkinson: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: Order. Points of order will be taken after Prime Minister's Questions.

Mr. Wilkinson: It relates specifically to the question.

Mr. Speaker: Later.

Mr. Biffen: It is a grotesque insult to Mr. Alasdair Milne to suggest that he is the kind of person who could have his arm twisted. The BBC has an enviable reputation for current affairs presentation, which is secured only by constant vigilance. A number of my hon. Friends very understandably feel that a recent programme fell well below those standards and have intimated that they intend to take legal proceedings. In those circumstances, I propose to let the matter rest.
With regard to remarks concerning the early-day motion on sport in South Africa, my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Mr. Macfarlane), the Under-Secretary of State for the Environment, said last night, in the context of the Gleneagles agreement, that we shall seek to "persuade, to advise, to discourage not to prevent."—[Official Report, 13 February 1984; Vol 54, c. 104.] That is a sound and commonsense view, and I hope that the hon. Gentleman will not engage in a lot of scaring.

Mr. Wilkinson: May I say — —[HON. MEMBERS: "No".]

Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman may ask his question.

Mr. Wilkinson: May I ask, Mr. Speaker, why you would not accept my point of order?—[Interruption.]

Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman has lost an opportunity.

Mr. Hattersley: I hope that the Leader of the House understands that he cannot brush off lightly the speech made last Sunday by the chairman of the Conservative party. May I therefore ask the Leader of the House three direct and specific questions? First, was that speech seen and approved by the Prime Minister before she left for Moscow? Secondly, does the threat of "very serious action" against the BBC—those are the actual words of the Conservative party chairman—represent Government policy? Does a threat of very serious action imply that the Government will discriminate against the BBC unless it says what is of interest to, and approved by, Conservative Central Office? Thirdly, in a free society where individuals can pursue their complaints against broadcasters in court, what is the possible justification for the Conservative Government trying to intimidate the BBC?

Mr. Biffen: There is absolutely no question of the Government trying to intimidate the BBC. When the right hon. Gentleman makes such remarks, he is making a far greater slur against the BBC than against his political opponents. In his speech, my hon. Friend the chairman of the Conservative party presented a robust point of view about a subject which I now regard as sub judice.

Mr. Hattersley: Let me ask the leader of the House a precise question in the hope of a precise answer. When a member of the Government in which he serves, and the chairman of the party of which he is a member, threatened "very serious action", what did he mean?

Mr. Biffen: Anyone reading that speech could not conceive that, in the context in which those words were said, a threat against the BBC was intended. I stand by my observation. The matter is sub judice, and I shall not be drawn further.

Mr. Hattersley: rose—

Mr. Speaker: Order. In fairness to him, I shall call the right hon. Gentleman once more. [Interruption.] However, I remind the right hon. Gentleman that the time for other hon. Members to ask questions is being reduced.

Mr. Hattersley: I shall fulfil your instruction precisely, Mr. Speaker. Once more, what did the chairman of the Conservative party mean?

Mr. Biffen: The meaning is apparent from a proper and balanced reading of the text.

Mr. Marlow: Have the Americans told Her Majesty's Government what their reasons are for shelling various targets in the Lebanon, including Druze villages containing large numbers of civilian refugees? What is Her Majesty's Government's reaction to such action?

Mr. Biffen: The Government's view is that any action undertaken in the Lebanon has to be judged by the extent to which it will contribute to the process of reconciliation. The American Government are well aware of our view, and in that context it must mean reservations about the bombardment carried out from the sea.

Mr. Heathcoat-Amory: Does my right hon. Friend agree that although Mr. Andropov has given way to an older man, there is an opportunity now for new initiatives on arms control? The change in the Soviet leadership enables that country to shift its position on arms control without loss of face. Will my right hon. Friend urge our right hon. Friend the Prime Minister to follow up her useful and constructive visits to Hungary and the Soviet Union with further meetings to try to secure a lasting reduction in nuclear weapons on both sides?

Mr. Biffen: With the establishment of a new Soviet leadership it will be possible, I hope, to enter into more stable circumstances for the negotiations. I am sure that the initiative carried out by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister will be widely welcomed in this country and seen in the context of a detente that will engage all the major forces on both the Soviet and Western side.

Mr. Hoyle: asked the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Tuesday 14 February.

Mr. Biffen: I have been asked to reply.
I refer the hon. Gentleman to the reply that I gave some moments ago.

Mr. Hoyle: Will the right hon. Gentleman confirm that only 2,000 people at GCHQ in Cheltenham have accepted the thousand pieces of silver, less tax? How many of those people were members of trade unions? In view of the lack of success of the Government's policy, will they reverse their disastrous diktat, or will they sack all the other people who refuse to sign the document?

Mr. Biffen: I cannot confirm the hon. Gentleman's figures. It is far too early for him to assert that the Government's policy has failed.

Mr. Hirst: As my right hon. Friend is aware, my right hon. Friend the Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, is today proposing measures to control the use of chemical weapons. Does that not represent a far more positive contribution to peace and security in the world than the unilateralist mouthings in Washington of the Leader of the Opposition?

Mr. Biffen: I am certain that my hon. Friend's proposals at Geneva mark a constructive step in the control of chemical warfare, an area where initiatives are badly needed. I am certain that they will have the wholehearted endorsement of the House and I hope that my hon. Friend will be rather more successful than the Leader of the Opposition seems to have been in Washington.

Mr. Beith: As fundamental objections to the Government's White Paper on electoral law have been raised by both the Liberal and Labour parties, what new steps do the Government propose to obtain all-party agreement, or do they propose to renege on the pledge that was given by Lord Whitelaw that such legislation would proceed only by all-party agreement?

Mr. Biffen: The first step is to have the debate on the White Paper.

Mr. Flannery: asked the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for 14 February.

Mr. Biffen: I have been asked to reply.
I refer the hon. Gentleman to the reply that I gave some moments ago.

Mr. Flannery: When the right hon. Gentleman eventually talks to the Prime Minister, will he try to exert what democratic pressures he can so that she will give the House a full report on the Omani contract and the role played by Mr. Mark Thatcher? Can it be revealed to the House how much money Mr. Mark Thatcher got from that contract?

Mr. Biffen: I cannot helpfully add to the exchanges that have already taken place on this matter between my right hon. Friend and Labour Members.

Mr. Andrew MacKay: Does my right hon. Friend agree that the building societies should have reduced their rate of interest to borrowers several weeks ago? Does he further agree that the £1 billion intake of savings that has been announced today for January means that the building societies, which were keen enough to jack up their interest rates, have no excuse at all for not reducing them forthwith?

Mr. Biffen: It is always tempting for politicians to instruct building societies how to conduct themselves. I hope that I shall not disappoint my hon. Friend too much if I resist the temptation. It is encouraging that the general speculation is about how soon interest rates will go down.

Mr. Allen McKay: Will the Leader of the House consider consulting his right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, or his right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer as it is the appropriate time, on the unfair and inequitable way that concessionary television licences are dealt with in relation to old-age pensioners? Will he remind the Chancellor of the Exchequer that for an increase in tax of one third of a penny or an increase of 0·4 per cent. in VAT all old-age pensioners could receive a concessionary TV licence?

Mr. Biffen: The hon. Gentleman, more than most, has a well-documented interest in television licence fees. I know that he will realise that, just ahead of the Budget, I could not make comments of the sort that he is inviting me to make.

Mr. Adley: I did not hear my right hon. Friend's reply to the question of my hon. Friend the Member for


Northampton, North (Mr. Marlow). However, will my right hon. Friend confirm that it is not the Government's policy to support the current action of the American Government in lobbing heavy shells into the Lebanon? If that is not the Government's policy, will my right hon. Friend tell the Prime Minister when she returns that many hon. Members think that it should be?

Mr. Biffen: My answer was not expressed in the most elegant language that I might have chosen and was, therefore, lost to some extent in the chorus of reproach. However, I assure my hon. Friend that when he reads Hansard tomorrow he will see that I expressed sentiments that closely approximate to his.

Mr. Freud: asked the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for 14 February.

Mr. Biffen: I have been asked to reply.
I refer the hon. Gentleman to the reply that I gave some moments ago.

Mr. Freud: Is the Leader of the House aware of the deal that has been made between the DHSS and the tobacco industry whereby an £11 million health research trust is being set up which is specifically disbarred from investigating the effects of tobacco on health? Is not the right hon. Gentleman ashamed of that squalid deal?

Mr. Biffen: I was not aware of it, and as I was not aware of it, I cannot comment on it.

Mr. Tracey: Will my right hon. Friend confirm that there are now two former Labour Members of Parliament working directly for the Greater London council, and one working indirectly for it? Can he say whether they obtained their jobs through open competition?

Mr. Biffen: I am being invited to be exceedingly ungenerous. I do not know, and I prefer not to speculate.

Mr. Wilkinson: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. May I apologise at the outset to you and the House for appearing to take away the time of other right hon. and hon. Members who wanted to put questions. May I say, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that this is a serious point of order—

Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman should rephrase what he said. I am the Speaker.

Mr. Wilkinson: I am doubly sorry, Mr. Speaker. Would you not agree that the Question Time we have just had has exemplified the worst aspects, the most pernicious aspects, of open questions? Is it not true that the hon. Member for Falkirk, West (Mr. Canavan) did not address himself to the answer given by my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House who, in listing the Prime Minister's engagements for today, spoke of only two events—the funeral of Mr. Andropov and her meeting with Mr. Chernenko? Thereafter, we had a catalogue of questions on almost every subject under the sun, almost every one of which had nothing to do with the original question.

Mr. Speaker: Order. I shall be making a statement about open questions to other Departments later this afternoon. As to Prime Minister's Questions, I regret to say that it has ever been thus.

Mr. Dobson: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. May I attempt to protect the interests of one of my constituents who, to the best of my knowledge, is going about his lawful business in my constituency? During defence questions the Minister of State for Defence Procurement said that a complaint that had gone to him via the Metropolitan Police about something that happened in October was being independently investigated. He went on to assert certain characteristics of the event. I should like to know—

Mr. Speaker: Order. I shall stop the hon. Gentleman there, because it is not a question that I can answer. He must take the matter up with the Minister.

Mr. Dobson: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. I was seeking to protect the interests of my constituent. I seek your guidance about how I can further protect his interests as a result of the Minister interfering with any independent aspect of that inquiry.

Mr. Speaker: Order. That is not a matter for me. I say again to the hon. Gentleman that he must take the matter up with the Minister.

South Mozambique (Floods)

Mr. Guy Barnett: (by private notice) asked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs whether he will make a statement on the British Government's response to the flood disaster affecting south Mozambique.

The Minister for Overseas Development (Mr. Timothy Raison): The Government heard with the greatest concern of the devastation and flooding caused in Mozambique, Swaziland and part of South Africa by the recent cyclone. Last Sunday, we sent relief supplies by air freight to the British embassy in Maputo for the Mozambique authorities. These consist of 415 tents, 12,500 blankets, 500,000 water-purifying tablets and 200 cases of tinned meat. The total cost was £205,000. We are also making one Land Rover available to Oxfam for flood relief work. This will cost about £10,000.
Just before the cyclone struck, we had provided drought relief, which can also help flood victims. This relief consists of four Leyland lorries, 150 tonnes of protein-enriched soup powder and seeds, worth in all about £100,000. Part of this is still to be delivered. We are also providing substantial assistance to Swaziland.

Mr. Barnett: I am grateful to the Minister for his statement. Millions of people will have been horrified by the pictures on television last night of the disaster of huge dimensions that has struck particularly Mozambique as a result of the cyclone to which he referred. Is he aware that a serious crisis faces the whole of the Southern Africa Development Co-ordination Conference countries because of the three years of drought and of the double blow that has hit south Mozambique?
The Minister was present at the Lusaka SADC conference. What requests were made to him then for help? Were the reports true that he offered no new funds on that occasion? Does he realise that Mozambique is facing a tragedy of enormous proportions, that hundreds of people are dying, that $75 million worth of damage has already been done, that newly planted crops have been destroyed and cattle lost, and that there is a desperate need for a large quantity of food, clothing and medicines? Does he agree that a major response is needed from this country? Will a disaster relief committee be set up to centralise voluntary assistance?

Mr. Raison: The hon. Gentleman has strayed a little wide of the private notice question. Of course, I am very much aware both of the scale of the immediate disaster caused by the cyclone and of the great problem of drought in southern Africa. We have acted in conjuction with our partners in this matter. We are prepared to consider further requests to deal with the problem of the cyclone. Of course, we have continuing programmes of food and other forms of aid. We have recently started to provide a substantial programme for Mozambique.

Mr. Matthew Parris: As one who knows that part of southern Africa very well, having been at school there for 10 years, may I congratulate my right hon. Friend on his prompt and effective response to the problem and hope that it will be sustained and, if necessary, amplified as events demand?

Mr. Raison: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for what he has just said. May I add that I have arranged for a team of four highway engineers to spend up to three months in Swaziland to help to assess and carry out repairs to roads and bridges? I have also told the Swazi authorities that we can provide immediate reconstruction aid of up to £600,000 for this financial year.

Mr. Ted Rowlands: Having witnessed personally in the last fortnight the terrible devastation and heartbreaking consequences of the cyclone in southern Mozambique, may I underline the situation? After many have suffered death by drought, there is now death by drowning for many others. In village after village and district after district that I visited during the past fortnight there were simple requests. The first was for seeds because they have no seeds to plant. We must be concerned not only about present starvation but possible future starvation. Secondly, they want British water pumps from Listers, a British company that every village and every community admires. Thirdly, bridges have been destroyed in the rural communities in southern Mozambique, not just between Swaziland, South Africa and Mozambique. They need bridges, something we are very good at providing. I acknowledge the effort the Government have already made, but could they not respond to simple demands which we could answer effectively?

Mr. Raison: I have already said that we will consider further requests as they come in. I was, of course, aware that the hon. Gentleman has just been there, and I shall be happy to have a talk with him about the points he has made.

Mr. Michael Morris: Is my right hon. Friend aware that the Government's prompt response is welcome? Has Her Majesty's ambassador an element of discretion in making payments, because in the end the person on the ground is better able than anyone in London to make decisions? Can the Minister expand on whether we are giving extra medical supplies?

Mr. Raison: Ambassadors have very small sums of money which are spent at their discretion, but, of course, they report promptly to us on what they believe to be the needs involved, and we then consider them most carefully. My Department's record on handling disaster problems has, I think, been very good. I cannot add to what I have said about medical supplies, but I shall be happy to talk to my hon. Friend, if he so wishes.

Mr. Russell Johnston: Can the Minister confirm that part of the disaster — the washing away of a village called Salamanga, with a population of about 3,000—was due to the South Africans opening a dam on the Maputo? If so, will he make representations to the South African Government to the effect that they should make reparations?

Mr. Raison: I have seen a report to that effect, but I am afraid that I do not know the facts. I shall certainly inquire into them.

Mr. Nicholas Soames: I congratulate my right hon. Friend on the prompt action that he has taken. Does not he agree that there is great sympathy throughout the country for the intolerable suffering that goes on in many Third world countries? However exemplary the


Government's programme may be, will my right hon. Friend persuade his right hon. and learned Friend the Foreign Secretary to grant his Department more money so that we may do more and more for these poor people?

Mr. Raison: I share my hon. Friend's view about the concern over such events. In response to his question about the Department's budget, I should point out that we are bound by the Government's general public expenditure policy. However, if in time our economy strengthens and more money is available, we will not have any difficulty in spending it.

Mr. Dave Nellist: Notwithstanding the terrible tragedy of a flood following a drought and the fact that 100,000 people in the region have died as a result, is not the real problem a lack of distribution of home-grown or imported grain that is caused by South Africa's backing of terrorism and by the fact that southern Mozambique is controlled by terrorists who prevent food from reaching those people?

Mr. Raison: Many different factors contribute to the problem, but it is unquestionable that drought is predominant among them. No doubt the hon. Gentleman will have noticed that recently the Mozambique authorities and the South Africans have been engaging in talks.

Mr. Stuart Holland: The Minister will be aware that there is great concern on both sides of the House about the scale of the problems caused by the drought. He must also be aware that some of the measures that he has proposed are pitiful. That is clear, in that he has been talking about making available one Land Rover for an Oxfam programme although it clearly had already been scheduled. Surely the Minister is aware that Oxfam and others have argued that, in long-term development planning, attention should be paid, in particular, to the crises caused by weather and rapid weather changes. Will he take advantage of that emphasis in his Department and of the disaster response unit which was established by my right hon. Friend the Member for Clydesdale (Dame J. Hart) 10 years ago? Will the right hon. Gentleman ensure that he takes the initiative in finding out how the Government can give aid instead of waiting for the Mozambique authorities to come to him?

Mr. Raison: Our missions are in close touch with the Governments of those countries concerned. It is for them to put formal requests to us, but plenty of consultation goes on. I believe that we have shown that we can respond promptly.

Open Questions

Mr. Speaker: I have a brief ruling to make to clarify the position regarding open questions to departmental Ministers.
I have recently reviewed the practice regarding open questions to departmental Ministers, namely, questions relating to a meeting with some person or organisation without indicating the purpose of the question.
In the light of experience with a growing number of open questions this Session, I am now convinced that it would not be desirable to encourage them still further. I have therefore decided that once those open questions that at present stand in the Order Book have been answered, I shall revert to the earlier practice of the Chair and will not call supplementaries to any further question to a departmental Minister about that Minister's meetings which does not state its purpose reasonably precisely.

Sellafield (Discharges)

The Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Patrick Jenkin): With permission, Mr. Speaker, I shall make a further statement about the abnormal discharges to the sea last autumn from the British Nuclear Fuels plant at Sellafield in Cumbria and about the Government's plans for the future of the discharges from the plant.
I have today published the report of the investigation made by the radio-chemical inspectorate of my Department, and copies are in the Vote Office. The Health and Safety Executive, which is responsible for ensuring safe operation, has also published the report of the investigation by the nuclear installations inspectorate, and copies of this are also in the Vote Office. I should like to express my appreciation of the care with which the inspectors have carried out their tasks and the co-operation that they received from the company.
The conclusions of the reports confirm the interim account that I gave to the House on 21 December. I am advised that it would be inappropriate for me to comment further at this stage on the events that led to the incident itself, because the Director of Public Prosecutions is pursuing inquiries into the circumstances with the assistance of the Cumbrian police and the two inspectorates.
I must, however, describe the present situation with regard to the environmental contamination resulting from the incident. As I have made clear to the House, there is no evidence to suggest that this contamination, although very unsatisfactory, could cause significant damage to anyone's health. The sort of risks we are talking about is that someone might suffer from localised irritation of the skin from prolonged contact with one of a number of pieces of material which have been found with much higher than usual levels of radioactivity. Continued monitoring of the beaches shows that this small risk remains. The advice not to use the beaches unnecessarily therefore must still stand for the time being. However, at the request of my Department and the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, a more intensive examination of the nature, distribution and origins of the material is now being made in order to put us in the best possible position to take a safe and early decision about withdrawal of the advice.
As to the future of discharges from the plant, BNFL has already begun to implement a number of short-term measures put to it by the inspectorates. These include the installation of on-line monitors and automatic cut-offs for the pumps and will lead to safer and more reliable control of present discharges through the pipeline. The inspectorates consider, on the basis of the work done to date, that a discharge like that of last autumn could not now be repeated. The inspectorates have therefore agreed that the normal operation of the plant may be resumed. Other recommendations in the reports, which require action by Government Departments, are being urgently considered.
The main aim of the Government, and of the company's programme, will continue to be the reduction of discharges to the environment. BNFL already has in hand a major programme of investment costing over £100 million, which will reduce substantially radioactive emissions from Sellafield. As from next year, discharges of caesium to the

sea will be reduced to one tenth of the maximum released in recent years. The revised authorisation sent to the company in draft will, when implemented, reduce discharges of plutonium and other alpha emitters to 200 curies a year, which is also a very sharp reduction from previous levels.
We now need to consider what further steps should be taken. BNFL is proceeding with design and construction for a second-generation reprocessing plant for oxide fuel. This will incorporate a much cleaner technology from the start.
The new standards for this plant are part of a comprehensive long-term plan for Sellafield to ensure that its environmental impact meets the highest standards that are reasonably achievable. In setting firm objectives and ensuring progress, my Department will work closely with the other Departments concerned, including the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, with which it has joint responsibility under the Radioactive Substances Act 1960.
The reduction in discharges to the environment will lead to an increase in wastes retained on the Sellafield site, and these wastes must also be dealt with. Schemes will therefore be formulated and carried out, within the framework of the national waste management strategy, for the effective management of stored wastes until disposal routes are available and for the decommissioning of redundant installations.
The authorising Departments will continue to examine the adequacy of their own programmes for environmental monitoring and associated research. Full account will need to be taken of the report of Sir Douglas Black's inquiry, which is expected in May. If improvements are shown to be needed, they will be made.
The generation of electricity by means of nuclear power is and will remain an important component of this country's energy supplies, and the Sellafield reprocessing plant is an integral part of that civil nuclear programme. The Government reaffirm their confidence in the future of the plant. The public has a legitimate right to demand that the environmental standards within which it operates are of the utmost rigour. It is the Government's intention to see that they are.

Dr. John Cunningham: The Secretary of State has made a long statement that was, in effect, another interim report. While a number of aspects of what he said are undoubtedly welcome, a number of matters in the statement are unsatisfactory.
I welcome the publication of the two reports, both of which criticise management systems at the plant for the control of radioactive waste, and that is a very serious feature of these investigations. It is argued in the reports that the existing plant is inadequate and that warning systems are absent from the part of the plant that deals with sea outfall discharges.
I welcome the commitment of British Nuclear Fuels to refurbish that part of the plant as a priority, but will the Secretary of State assure the House that the necessary funding for that priority work will be made available without further delay? In view of his assurance that this kind of incident cannot happen again, will he institute a review of all aspects of the magnox plant at Sellafield to give some backing to that assurance, because we have heard such assurances before? When the nuclear installations inspectorate carried out a review of all the plants in 1980, it gave similar assurances for the future,


some of which now seem not to have been worth the paper on which they were written. Is it satisfactory for the nuclear installations inspectorate to remain below adequate strength?
Why has it taken three months for the right hon. Gentleman's Department and other Departments to ask for a more intensive examination of the nature of the pollutants? Is he not aware that Cumbria as a whole is being damaged by the situation which obtains and that the public has been advised against using the beaches for many weeks, which is affecting tourism in the area and all other aspects of life, in my constituency in particular but throughout west Cumbria? Three months to take a decision about a further investigation is far too leisurely an approach.
If the Secretary of State and the Government—and I am sorry to be long about this, but these are crucially important matters — intend to rest on the ALARA principle, "as low as reasonably achievable", is it not time that a definition was put on record of exactly what that means in practice, for no such definition appears ever to have been attempted? Would it not be better to accept now that, for the future operations of the industry—not just the new Thorpe oxide plant, but existing magnox processors—discharges should be eliminated altogether and that no discharges to the green environment should be allowed within a reasonable time scale?
I say to the Secretary of State that the statement comes odd from a Government who have leaked these reports comprehensively over the last 48 hours and tipped off the press about the statement. I arrived at Westminster yesterday to have four messages from the press asking me to give interviews about this statement today, so the press clearly knew what was going on. Is it satisfactory to have off-the-record briefings of correspondents of The Observer, and at the same time to have the police pursuing Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth over the availability of documents like this which carry a restricted covering and which contain information that is in the public interest?
I realise that the Secretary of State can say nothing now about the Black inquiry into health, which is perhaps the most important of all the inquiries taking place. I make no criticism about that, because the inquiry is continuing, but the House will wish, in the fullness of time when the reports are available, to debate all those issues.

Mr. Jenkin: No one would criticise the hon. Gentleman for treating this matter with great seriousness. He was right to put it in the context of the previous private notice question today, which my right hon. Friend the Minister for Overseas Development answered about the deaths from natural causes of hundreds of thousands of people in other parts of the world. It is important to make it clear that there is no risk of death to anyone as a result of this discharge. However, it was an unsatisfactory discharge and we should treat it seriously.
I can give the hon. Gentleman a categoric undertaking that there will be no shortage of funds for the necessary plant changes which are being and will be made to eliminate the chances of a repetition of this accident and substantially to reduce the discharges of radioactive material. British Nuclear Fuels Ltd. has in hand a programme costing more than £100 million, of which the largest part is devoted to the new SIXEP plant, which is

due to come on stream next year. If further measures are necessary in order to reach satisfactory standards, they will be taken.
As a result of the report, the company will conduct a review of all the operations in the plants at Sellafield. The hon. Gentleman referred to the earlier review following the Windscale trial. That was a review of the entire operation, but it did not examine the detailed management of individual plants. As the hon. Gentlemen rightly said, the errors which gave rise to this incident occurred in the detailed management of this plant.
I am dealing with the inspectorate urgently. We are considering a variety of possibilities to strengthen our monitoring capacity, including the possibility of using independent contractors to do the work.
The hon. Gentleman asked why it had taken three months to undertake a review. The early signs were of a rapid decline in the amount of contaminated material washed up on the beaches, and I certainly hoped—as I am sure did the hon. Gentleman—that this contamination would be short-lived. Events have proved otherwise. In those circumstances, with evidence of continuing detritus or radioactive material being washed up, we decided to examine the matter more systematically to try to find out how it was happening.
As to the definition of ALARA, the hon. Gentleman must realise that this is an obligation upon the nuclear industry in addition to the numerical limits placed upon discharges. I assure him that we have in mind the possibility of extending the numerical discharges so that they cover not only a rolling three-month period but shorter periods. That will remove some of the uncertainty of which he complained.
I do not believe that any Government have been more open in their dealings with the House and the public than the present Government have been with this discharge, and I shall continue to keep the House as fully informed as possible on those matters. It is not for me to decide whether an official should be prosecuted for disclosing a restricted document to Greenpeace in breach of undertakings.

Mr. Nigel Forman: As my right hon. Friend is Secretary of State for the Environment, will he accept that many hon. Members on both sides of the House applaud the responsible line that he has taken on this important issue? However, will he also realise that, although progress is welcome in reducing emissions, particularly of caesium and plutonium, the matter of concern to this House should be the long-term effects of low-level emissions of all radioactive substances, whether into the air or water? Will he make absolutely sure that that aspect of this environmental problem is taken fully into account by Sir Douglas Black and by everybody else who will be looking at the continuing effects of this incident?

Mr. Jenkin: I am well aware of my hon. Friend's long concern with these matters, and I assure him that we shall treat the findings of Sir Douglas Black's review with the utmost care. We expect his report perhaps in May. It will be one aspect, one of the pieces of evidence, that we shall need to maintain continually in view in looking at the environmental impact of this and other nuclear plants.

Mr. Donald Stewart: Will the Secretary of State confirm that Sir Douglas Black's inquiry


will not be confined to the vicinity of Windscale but will extend right up the west of Scotland in the light of increasing radioactivity levels in fish there and concern about the rising incidence of leukaemia cases? Will this establishment continue processing waste from countries outside the United Kingdom?

Mr. Jenkin: The question of other health risks outside the Sellafield area would, technically, be outside Sir Douglas Black's inquiry. If any hon. Member has evidence which suggests that there might be a link with the Sellafield plant, that is a matter in the first instance for the health authorities of the country concerned. If it appears relevant, no doubt Sir Douglas Black's inquiry will take account of that.
The answer to the right hon. Gentleman's second question is that the decision to proceed with the thermal oxide reprocessing plant, which was approved by this House in 1978 and for which planning permission has recently been given by Copeland district council, is intended to enable Sellafield to reprocess fuel not only from this country but from other nuclear power countries. But the right hon. Gentleman will also know that the obligation to return, to take back, the waste from that reprocessing is an integral part of the contracts which have been made with the firms concerned.

Several Hon. Members: rose—

Mr. Speaker: Order. To allay fears and frustrations, may I say that I shall call all hon. Members who have been standing. We have important business to follow, and I hope that it will be possible to complete questions on this statement by about 4.15 pm.

Sir Hector Monro: Is my right hon. Friend aware of the concern that is felt in the Solway area not only for the local residents but for fishing and the future of tourism? Will he say a little more about the failure of the procedures in relation to his assurance that it cannot happen again? May we be assured that sufficient resources will be available, along with sufficient contractual experience, to finish the SIXEP plant in time this year so that the level of treatment will be improved by next year?

Mr. Jenkin: I am well aware of the concern that has been expressed in other coastal areas. My hon. Friend will be glad to know that there is no evidence of any flotsam having been washed up on the northern beaches of the Solway firth of higher than 10 millirads, the limit which the NRPB has regarded as safe.
The answer to his question about the SIXEP plant is that it is intended, and hoped, that it will be finished and commissioned this year, and I have no doubt that BNFL is doing its best to achieve that.
The Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food—which is responsible for monitoring the marine environment — has, in the report which was published last December, given a completely clean bill of health to the fish and shellfish, in that there is no hazard as a result of this incident to anyone who eats them.

Mr. D. N. Campbell-Savours: Will the Secretary of State make it clear that any person with an interest in this subject has the right to communicate his or her views to Sir Douglas Black and his inquiry? Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that many people in Cumbria,

including myself, although highly critical of BNFL's management systems—in particular, the shabby way in which it treated Greenpeace — firmly and positively support the nuclear industry, a safe nuclear industry?
Is he also aware that the only way in which the people of Cumbria will be fully satisfied in the coming years is if the Government ditch the principle of ALARA—as low as reasonably achievable—to which he referred in his statement, and switch to ALATA — as low as technically achievable—irrespective of the costs?
Is the right hon. Gentleman further aware that every scrap of information, every statement in this House, every written answer and any statement made by any politician or whatever in relation to contamination within the county of Cumbria damages our industrial base, damages our tourist industry, damages our public services and does immense damage to the population at large by causing further and greater tension?
Will the right hon. Gentleman, in whatever allocations he makes available to the county in future, take those matters into account because our development is now being prejudiced by the poor publicity that our county is getting, publicity which is often totally out of proportion to the nature of the danger, which is far less than many people have been advocating nationally?

Mr. Jenkin: I have the utmost sympathy with the difficulties which the hon. Gentleman and his hon. Friend the Member for Copeland (Dr. Cunningham) have faced in recent months, and in earlier years, as a result of incidents at the Sellafield plant. In everything that I and the Government have done, we have had the impact on the local population greatly in mind. As the hon. Gentleman knows, I have been to see some of the development and reclamation projects which are going on in his constituency, when that point was made to me clearly by his constituents and by the constituents of the hon. Member for Copeland.
I should like to feel that we shall soon be able to put this behind us and have a much more satisfactory plant operating there in future. In the meantime, I am sure that the hon. Gentleman would not in any way advocate that I should not be as frank as possible with the House and the public when dealing with matters of this seriousness.

Mr. Kenneth Warren: While welcoming the Secretary of State's announcement and applauding the technical prowess of the British nuclear industry, may I ask him to give an assurance that he will not be dazzled into believing that accidents can never happen again? Will he say that he appreciates that quality and safety are as much attitudes of mind in management as the provision of wonderful tools to control the processes?

Mr. Jenkin: My hon. Friend, who speaks with great experience of these matters, has spoken wise words. I am now satisfied that the management philosophy which he enunciates is treated with great seriousness by the management of BNFL.

Mr. George Foulkes: Will the Secretary of State confirm that discharges of full tanks such as that which took place last autumn have occurred on four occasions in the past few years? What, therefore, gives him confidence to say that it will never happen again? Does the right hon. Gentleman


agree that he would have greater confidence if he were to insist that BNFL installed the best available technology to deal with processing at that plant?

Mr. Jenkin: The question of precisely what technology to put into the plant is really one for BNFL, and I have no doubt that the hon. Gentleman will wish to satisfy himself with BNFL. My inspectors must be satisfied that the plant and its operation are such as to reduce to as low as reasonably achievable the environmental pollution.
As for the suggestion that there have been earlier discharges, I understand that there is no evidence that there have been discharges of the amount of radioactive material which is involved in this discharge. Modifications have already been made to the plant that will make any repetition of the incidents of last November impossible. The technical equipment that has been put in renders impossible any such repetition.

Mr. Simon Hughes: The Secretary of State has made four statements in just over three months. Although we welcome the report, it does not deal with the immediate need to have the beaches cleared. Is the right hon. Gentleman able to tell the House today that that can now be authorised? Secondly, the right hon. Gentleman has promised to report to the House on his consideration of the recommendations in the report. I note that there are 25 recommendations, some of which require immediate action, especially the discharge from the solvent stocks. The House will want reassurance that that will be the subject of an early report to the House, if not an extremely quick report.
The Minister's reassurances have been heard and listened to, but they have not been fulfilled. Does he accept that with every expansion of the nuclear industry it will be impossible for him to say that there will not be discharges in future, and that that is the risk that the country is especially concerned about?

Mr. Jenkin: I understand the hon. Gentleman's concern. I do not think that I can add to what I have already said about the beaches. There continue to be some forms of flotsam which do not yet reach the standards demanded by the NRPB's tests in ascertaining whether the beaches are safe for normal public access. In these circumstances, the only responsible course is to undertake, as we have done, a more systematic review of what will be necessary so that we can make an early statement to the effect that the beaches are safe and can be opened. Many of the recommendations have already been acted upon; others are already being acted upon and the necessary changes will be implemented. The remaining recommendations will, likewise, be acted upon. BNFL has accepted in full all the recommendations of both the radio-chemical inspectorate's report and the nuclear installations inspectorate's report. That is the best guarantee that I can give that these matters are being taken extremely seriously.

Mr. Richard Holt: Does my right hon. Friend accept that, unlike the press, some of us have not had the opportunity to read a leaked report in advance, and that I had to listen carefully to his statement? I recall him saying that alternative methods of disposal would need to be sought. If the alternative methods include the anhydrite mine in Billingham, which is in the constituency of the

hon. Member for Stockton, North (Mr. Cook), there will be great distress in the north-east of England. I hope that he will take this opportunity of saying that, notwithstanding his final decision on the NIREX proposals for Billingham, nothing from Sellafield is in his mind in that area.

Mr. Jenkin: I understand the problems that my hon.. Friend and a number of his neighbouring parliamentary constituencies face. I have made no final decision about Billingham or other disposal sites. The most that has happened is that NIREX has made certain proposals. I have published the principles upon which the disposal sites must be chosen and operated—the principles are still out for consultation—and the matter is subject to future planning inquiries, as I outlined when I made an earlier statement on the subject. To that extent, I can give my hon. Friend the reassurance that he is seeking.

Mr. Frank Cook: I commend the Minister for the great concern that he has displayed in a balanced and steady statement. Will he accept that one of the principal reasons for anxiety within the electorate is that so many bland assurances have been given in the past which have been unfounded, as a result of which many accidents have happened? When the Minister replied to my hon. Friend the Member for Copeland (Dr. Cunningham), he referred to a much slower rate of decay than that which was anticipated. He said that there had been increased detritus on the coastline and a much more systematic monitoring procedure.
Bearing in mind that anxiety has been caused by bland assurances and that we need to remove that cause of anxiety, will the right hon. Gentleman accept that we cannot placate an electorate that is becoming alarmed rather than alert until such time as the chemical and radioactive inspectorates are given some form of representation of qualified, professional observers and commentators who have no vested interest in the industry?

Mr. Jenkin: I think that the hon. Gentleman has lost sight—it would be easy for any of us to do so—of the fact that the nuclear industry is one of the safest industries in which to work and near which to live. The number of deaths that can be said to be attributable to the normal operation of a nuclear plant is infinitesimal. Its record should be compared with that of the coal mines and North sea divers and set against the natural hazards that we heard about earlier today.
I assure the hon. Gentleman that those who undertake monitoring roles in the nuclear installations inspectorate and my own radio-chemical inspectorate are entirely independent of the industry. That is why the Health and Safety Executive and the Department of the Environment, as well as the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, have a monitoring responsibility that is separate from that of the Department of Energy and the nuclear industry itself.
There are representatives of many different sectors on the Radioactive Waste Management Advisory Committee. The Government have plenty of outside, independent and impartial information and advice on the subject.

Mr. David Crouch: I thank my right hon. Friend for the frank way in which he and the Under-Secretary of State have made statements to the House over the past two months to explain the extent of the seriousness


of the contamination arising from the discharges at Sellafield. We appreciate that my right hon. Friend is the Secretary of State for the Environment, but we are all concerned about what goes on inside the plant under BNFL's management as well as what happens outside. Is my right hon. Friend satisfied about what might happen outside as a result of discharges into the sea? Is he satisfied also that the procedures of management are satisfactory in every way in the existing plant, or will be in future plant, to prevent such discharges in future? It is in my understanding that the discharges that occurred were a failure of management proedures at a fairly low level on the nightshift rather than any fault in the machinery and the operation of the plant itself.

Mr. Jenkin: The precise circumstances are currently the subject of study by the police and the Director of Public Prosecutions. I do not think that it would be right for me to comment in detail, but I understand that a statement has been made today by the chairman and chief executive of BNFL which gives some sign of what may have lain at fault.
It is the prime responsibility of both the inspectorates involved to work with the management of the company to ensure that management systems and the structure of the plant are such as to reduce to the absolute minimum the risk of discharges and other hazards to health. That is their primary role, and I can tell my hon. Friend that the distinguished professionals who undertake the task exercise enormous care and dedication.

Mr. Ron Lewis: May I assure the Minister that the issues raised by my hon. Friends the Members for Copeland (Dr. Cunningham) and Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours) are not exaggerated and that they are causing great concern to the people of Cumbria? Can he give an assurance, with the approach of the holiday season, that all of the Cumbrian beaches are safe?

Mr. Jenkin: I understand the hon. Gentleman's point. I hope very much that we shall be able to move towards giving such an assurance as swiftly as possible. However, I cannot give the hon. Gentleman the undertaking which he seeks this afternoon.

Mr. Dennis Skinner: Will the Minister tell us, without trying to evade the question, how many people have been contaminated? We need to know the precise number so that his report is precise. Will he bear in mind also that it comes as a bit of a cheek from the Government to talk about trying to find protection for those living in the Sellafield environment when they have cut the Health and Safety Executive from about 4,250 employees to 3,723 since they came into power? The nuclear inspectorate has been affected adversely as a result of cuts. Is this statement just another chapter in events that must lead to stopping the development of the PWR programme?

Mr. Jenkin: Nothing I have said today has any relevance to the PWR programme. Following the incidents, four members of Greenpeace had their hands checked for contamination, and no detectable activity was found. Any contamination would have been less than 10 per cent. of the level permissible under the Factories Act 1961 for exposure on a continuing basis. Measurements of intake of radioactivity being made by BNFL on a

confidential basis, at the request of 38 individual members of the public—any of whom can ask for this monitoring to be carried out by BNFL's doctors—show only small percentages of the relevant internationally recommended limits. Yesterday, in answer to a question by the hon. Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours), it was made clear that eight of those 38 people had intake measurements that showed the presence of ruthenium 106, but the quantities measured were all close to or within the limits of detection.

Mr. Skinner: What about the others?

Mr. Jenkin: That is the best answer I can give to the hon. Gentleman. As I said in answer to an earlier question, the radio-chemical inspectorate staff are dealing urgently with this matter.

Mr. David Alton: Does the Secretary of State agree that, before the publication of the Black report, it is premature to proceed with the construction of a thermal oxide reprocessing plant at Sellafield? Would it not be better to exercise caution? Does he regret that in 1978 the then Secretary of State for Energy, Mr. Benn, decided to go ahead with the construction of this reprocessing plant? Does he agree that my right hon. Friend the leader of the Liberal party was right when at that time he prayed against the order?

Mr. Jenkin: Liberals have a way of never having to take responsibility for anything and of always being able to trot out their earlier words. The decision of the whole House to go ahead was right. The hon. Gentleman will know that we are talking about greatly improved technology. The plant's design will incorporate the highest standards of environmental protection. A much cleaner process will be used in the new plant. I see no reason why it should not go ahead as planned.

Mr. Tam Dalyell: The Secretary of State rightly refers to the distinction of the staff of both the radio-chemical inspectorate and the NII. Following his answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Copeland (Dr. Cunningham), may we be clear about whether there is under-staffing? My understanding is that part of the trouble has arisen because of a shortage of staff. If that is so, what will be done to fill what is, admittedly, a difficult set of places to fill?

Mr. Jenkin: In the light of the report and its follow-up, I must determine precisely the monitoring requirements. I assure the hon. Gentleman that, if it transpires that extra manpower is required, it will be provided in some way or another—possibly by the use of outside contractors—because the monitoring must be done.

BILL PRESENTED

PENSIONS COMMUTATION

The Chancellor of the Exchequer, supported by Mr. Peter Rees, Mr. John Moore, Mr. Barney Hayhoe, and Mr. Ian Stewart, presented a Bill to dissolve the Pensions Commutation Board and to amend the Pensions Commutation Act 1871: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time tomorrow and to be printed. [Bill 103.]

Manchester International Airport

Mr. Fred Silvester: I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to provide for the vesting of all property, rights and liabilities of Manchester International Airport in a company limited by shares; and for related purposes.
Manchester international airport began its life on its present site in 1938. It was a product of great courage and foresight by Manchester, which decided by only one vote to carry on, despite previous disappointments. The city raised the money and overcame strong objections, and it has supported the airport ever since. The city is proud of the airport, and the airport has succeeded beyond its wildest expectations. The airport is a great tribute to municipal enterprise, and we should be grateful to the city fathers who seized the original opportunity.
There is another aspect to the story. Manchester international airport is no longer a local enterprise but is a national asset. It is third in size in this country, being half the size of Gatwick and nearly three times as large as the next largest airport. It is no longer a city airport. It serves an area covering 20 million people and half the manufacturing business. It is probably the largest single dynamo to economic growth in the northern half of England, yet we fail to recognise it.
The Government and Whitehall, as the recent allocation of freeports clearly shows, regard it as merely another of those regional interests that must from time to time be placated. A further symptom of this disease would be if the Government decided that they could not legislate about Manchester airport unless they did so on a similar basis for all other local authority airports. Some Mancunians fail to recognise the change and insist on seeing the airport as theirs.
The conflict between regional importance and city proprietorship is not new. In 1974 an attempt was made to solve the conflict. Instead, an unsatisfactory compromise was produced. The other districts of the Greater Manchester area were brought in to share equally in the management and profits, although the land and buildings technically still belong to the city. There was opposition at the time. That is not surprising, since it was a solution which surrendered the city's ownership of the airport to a body which had no special claim to it. It is no more a county airport than a city airport. The demise of the Greater Manchester council will give us, once and for all, a chance to get it right.
The Bill aims to bring us—the city of Manchester, the financial and industrial institutions, the people of the north, Members of Parliament and the people in Whitehall —up to date in our perceptions of a great asset. It is based on the reconciliation of two principles: first, that Manchester has made a valuable investment and has the right to draw a good return from it; and, secondly, that Manchester international airport is too important to the north as a whole for its future to be dictated by this historic link, and it is now against the best interests of the airport to maintain the present position.
The circumstances are not new. Many a family business has grown so that the family has been forced to relinquish control and merely retain a share of the greater profits. We have reached that stage. Local pride must not strangle what local pride has created. It is time for Manchester international airport to go free.
I am not someone who believes in privatisation for its own sake. We must look at each case by its merits. There can be few functions more open to commercial pressures than an international airport. Its customers have a global view and are disinclined to respond to local perspectives. The airline has a flinty eye on commercial advantage. A recent report by Professor Doganis has confirmed his previous finding that Manchester international airport is
very expensive for aircraft operators and passengers
and probably the most expensive airport in Europe. The airport is trying to run with a ball and chain around its leg.
I shall give four examples of the way in which local authority control damages the development of the airport. First, profit is paid to the local authorities in a way that is determined in advance. It is already agreed that the contribution will be £5·67 million in 1983–84 and £5·89 million in 1984–85. It becomes, therefore, a fixed charge instead of a profit, and in the past airport charges have been raised to accommodate it.
Secondly, the position is aggravated by the limitation imposed on borrowing powers. The Government have been generous and far-sighted in the loan consent for regional and national schemes, but more schemes must be financed from the airport's own resources than would normally be the case. Whereas in 1975–76 all schemes were financed from borrowing, in 1982–83 the number was down to half. Plans for future investment involve up to £100 million in capital expenditure by 1990.
Thirdly, Manchester international airport is not master in its own house. It is obliged to employ the services of the city. As it is not a legal entity, it has to use the city corporation for contracts. The Greater Manchester council undertakes invoicing for the airport's major accounts. The airport takes services from the city architects, engineers, the town clerk, the city estates and valuations officer, the county personnel department, the treasurer's department, the county engineers and debt management. That costs the airport in excess of £1·5 million a year, and it is in the ludicrous position of not directly controlling the placing of some of its commercial services.
The fourth example shows that the employee terms are linked to those of the city. Local authority rates of pay, for instance, provide high shift allowances because shifts are a less important part of the normal course of events for local authorities than they are for airports. Wage costs are, therefore, unnecessarily high.
My Bill proposes that the airport's assets and liabilities be transferred to a company limited by shares. The airport currently has an asset value at cost price of £58 million. It has a net profit of £7·4 million and a good track record. There is no question but than an airport company could be launched on a sound commercial basis, probably with a market value of about £100 million.
The launch can and should be handled by Manchester's financial institutions. The date of transfer would be the same as that for the ending of the Greater Manchester council, presumably 1 April 1986. The company's articles would be settled after discussions with interested parties, but would provide that the city or its nominees should hold no more than one third of the shares, and the British Airports Authority, its successors and nominees would be precluded from being shareholders. The remaining two thirds of the shares would be held by the Secretary of State on trust for sale to the public within 15 months. I believe that that will be sufficient to prepare the company to go to the market on a normal commercial basis.
The shares would, of course, be issued fully paid, leaving the company to raise further equity capital later as it needed it. The proceeds of the sale, together with any profits paid to the Government during their 15 months of ownership, would be paid to the city of Manchester and the other districts. What would be a fair distribution among the districts would be subject to negotiation, no doubt, but my view is set out in the schedule to the Bill. For example, if the company were valued at £100 million, I would expect the city of Manchester, in addition to its one third share, to receive about £44 million and the districts sums ranging from £2 million to about £3·2 million. In view of the fact that the involvement of the other districts has been shorter, and they have put much less into the airport, that distribution seems to be fair.
The result of the Bill would be that the city would receive a large capital sum to help with its many problems. It would continue to receive contributions to the rate fund, almost certainly at an even higher level as the airport flourishes. It would enjoy the benefits of any capital gain on its shareholding, but the airport would be free to run its affairs entirely as a commercial operation, spreading its benefits throughout the region, which badly needs them. There will be a need for wide consultation, but the Bill provides a firm proposal rather than generalised prejudices. I therefore commend it to the House.

Mr. Alfred Morris: I rise to oppose the motion.
Before turning to the issue of privatisation, I must tell the House that the motion has given deep offence to people of all persuasions in Greater Manchester. I am told that Manchester's Liberals are "appalled" by the motion. They are among the more restrained of its critics. Even lifelong Conservatives have reacted with "anger and disgust" at the way in which the hon. Member for Manchester, Withington (Mr. Silvester) launched his so-called Bill. By a non-political source it has been described as a "shoddy and shabby" little Bill which this House should reject with contempt.
Of course, the truth is that there is no Bill. The hon. Member's fine print is not only well-hidden; it does not yet exist. The House has no details of the hon. Member's Bill on which to form a considered judgment. All we have is a proposal that is as sketchy as it is obnoxious to anyone who knows anything about Manchester international airport. On that ground alone it should be rejected.
Manchester's reaction to the motion is hardly surprising. The hon. Member, who sits for a Manchester constituency, had no consultation about it with Manchester city council, which owns the airport; with the Greater Manchester council, which jointly shares in its management; with the airport authority, which runs the airport; or with the 6,000 people who work at the airport.
To all of them, the hon. Member's proposal was a bolt from the blue. The first the airport authority knew of it came in a brief story in the Manchester Evening News of 27 January, after which the authority wrote to the hon. Member to ask him what it was all about. I am told that, up to this morning, there had been no reply from the hon. Member, and I hope the House will agree that it is simply

not good enough for him to have treated those who own and run the airport, and the people who work there, so contemptuously.
I turn now to the issue of privatisation. The Secretary of State for Transport, in a recent letter to the leader of Manchester city council, said that
Manchester International Airport is one of the most successful and profitable of our regional airports".
He could have gone much further. After Heathrow, Manchester airport is easily the most profitable in Britain today. Its profit in 1982–83 was £7·4 million. In the same year, Gatwick's profit was less than £1 million. With over 5 million passengers in the current year, Manchester is by a considerable margin Britain's third airport. In terms of quality of service it is Britain's best.
The airport's success did not happen overnight. It was achieved by courage and foresight, by imaginative planning and patience, by intensely hard work and shrewd business sense. That is the combination that made Manchester international airport as important to the regional economy of the north-west today as our famous ship canal itself was earlier this century. Who were the shrewd business men who brought this about? They were successive generations of Manchester city councillors, public men and women of all parties and of none. Acting together, with the full support of Manchester's ratepayers, they took the investment decisions that are paying off so handsomely today.
There were years when Manchester airport did not make a profit. Only in the last few years have the city and the county taken a return on their ratepayers' investment. Moreover, even that return has been ploughed back into the regional economy. Under the hon. Member's proposal, there can be no guarantee whatever that the airport's profits will stay in the north-west.
Now that the major risks have been taken and an increasingly successful future for the airport seems assured, the hon. Member wants to poach the north-west's most valuable public asset for private profit. That is why there is so much resentment in Manchester about his proposal and such strong determination at the town and county halls to keep the sticky fingers of the profiteer out of the ratepayers' pockets.
Under the existing block grant system, loss of the legitimate return on a public investment would inflict further hardship on ratepayers in the conurbation. Is that what the hon. Member thinks Mancunians want? Is it not only fair that the ratepayers of Manchester should now benefit from the success which they alone created?
Yet the issue is not only one of justice for Manchester's ratepayers. There are other matters of important regional and national interest.
Manchester airport is vital to the economy of the whole north-west. Of the 6,000 jobs it has created, 20 per cent. are in the public sector and 80 per cent. in the private sector. Recent assessments suggest that a further 20,000 workers owe their livelihood, wholly or partly, to the airport's existence. The compelling need now is for further growth, not least of scheduled services. These services, on which commerce and industry depend, are often the least profitable, but they are of the first importance to the regional economy.
Of course, there can be no assurance that a private company, with clear legal duties to shareholders, would want to expand the scheduled services. Nor with private


ownership is it likely that the extremely sensitive environmental issues, so important to local residents, would count for much compared with maximising profit.
There can be no assurance either that a private company would build expensive new facilities to avoid overcrowding at the airport; indeed, the reverse is more likely, since overcrowding could be as profitable for the shareholder as it would be uncomfortable for the passenger.
Again, there can be no assurance that the airport's staff and, as we have heard from the hon. Member today, even their wages and salaries will not be reduced in the pursuit of profit. Most important of all, there can be no assurance that the airport will not be milked without any regard whatever for the importance of its wider economic role in the north-west.
There is a hint in the Government's White Paper "Streamlining the Cities"—where it touches on airports—that more private capital must be injected into publicly owned airports, that ratepayers should not have to carry the burden—as it is called—of such undertakings, and that private involvement would sharpen their efficiency.
Manchester airport is already efficient. If anyone doubts that, let him name the private companies in the north-west that showed a profit of £7·4 million last year. Again, Manchester airport now has no difficulty in securing private capital for its investments, nor in arranging for partnership with the private sector for development work at Ringway. Much apart from being a burden on the rates, Manchester airport is quite the reverse.
Let me make it pikestaff plain. The hon. Member's proposal will not of itself bring in one more passenger, create one new job, or add a single penny to either the airport's profits or those of businesses in the region that it serves. In fact, the sheer futility of this motion was conceded by the hon. Member himself when, in a recent interview on Granada Television, he was asked what was wrong with the way in which the airport was now being run. His reply was the cryptic comment, "Well, I think nothing".
The hon. Member seems totally unaware that this is the very worst moment to be causing uncertainty about the future of Manchester airport. Is he not aware, first, that the Government still have to determine the whole deeply controversial question of the third London airport; secondly, that the Civil Aviation Authority is in the middle of a major review of the airline industry; and, thirdly, that the impending proposals for the sale of the British Airports Authority and British Airways will have a major impact on the future of air transport in this country? Everyone who recalls the fiasco at Amersham International will see that the hon. Member's motion coincides with a degree of uncertainty which could be financially disastrous even to the course he proposes.
By common consent, Manchester today has many daunting problems that merit the attention of the House. They are problems that affect people in every part of the city — the constituents of the hon. Member for Withington as well as mine. The city's two longest and most distressing queues are those for jobs and homes. We have one of the gravest problems of youth unemployment in Britain. Among other pressing problems, there is growing child poverty and increasing deprivation among the elderly at a time when our social services are starved of funds. Most of our problems require more resources for

their solution. Yet the hon. Gentleman's sole contribution is to suggest what would in effect be a financial mugging of the city's ratepayers.
The best message that we can send to those who own, control and work at Manchester airport is one of warm congratulation on what they have achieved and the best wishes of this House for further success. In the interests of economic revival in the north-west as a whole, their commitment to an expanding international airport must be allowed to succeed. I ask the House to defeat the motion.

Question put, pursuant to Standing Order No. 15 (Motions for leave to bring in Bills and nomination of Select Committees at commencement of public business): —

The House divided: Ayes 154, Noes 171.

Division No. 162]
[4.45 pm


AYES


Adley, Robert
Hanley, Jeremy


Alexander, Richard
Harvey, Robert


Amess, David
Haselhurst, Alan


Ashby, David
Hawkins, Sir Paul (SW N'folk)


Aspinwall, Jack
Hawksley, Warren


Atkins, Rt Hon Sir H.
Hayes, J.


Atkins, Robert (South Ribble)
Heathcoat-Amory, David


Atkinson, David (B'm'th E)
Hill, James


Batiste, Spencer
Hind, Kenneth


Beaumont-Dark, Anthony
Hirst, Michael


Bellingham, Henry
Holland, Sir Philip (Gedling)


Bennett, Sir Frederic (T'bay)
Holt, Richard


Benyon, William
Howarth, Gerald (Cannock)


Best, Keith
Hubbard-Miles, Peter


Biggs-Davison, Sir John
Hunter, Andrew


Bonsor, Sir Nicholas
Jones, Robert (W Herts)


Bottomley, Peter
King, Roger (B'ham N'field)


Bowden, A. (Brighton K'to'n)
Knowles, Michael


Bowden, Gerald (Dulwich)
Leigh, Edward (Gainsbor'gh)


Braine, Sir Bernard
Lennox-Boyd, Hon Mark


Brandon-Bravo, Martin
Lewis, Sir Kenneth (Stamf'd)


Bright, Graham
Lightbown, David


Brinton, Tim
Lord, Michael


Brown, M. (Brigg &amp; Cl'thpes)
McCurley, Mrs Anna


Browne, John
McCusker, Harold


Bruinvels, Peter
Macfarlane, Neil


Buck, Sir Antony
MacKay, Andrew (Berkshire)


Budgen, Nick
Malins, Humfrey


Burt, Alistair
Maples, John


Carlisle, Kenneth (Lincoln)
Marlow, Antony


Chapman, Sydney
Mawhinney, Dr Brian


Chope, Christopher
Maxwell-Hyslop, Robin


Churchill, W. S.
Merchant, Piers


Clark, Sir W. (Croydon S)
Miller, Hal (B'grove)


Cockeram, Eric
Mills, Iain (Meriden)


Conway, Derek
Moate, Roger


Corrie, John
Molyneaux, Rt Hon James


Currie, Mrs Edwina
Monro, Sir Hector


Dickens, Geoffrey
Morris, M. (N'hampton, S)


Dicks, Terry
Moynihan, Hon C.


Douglas-Hamilton, Lord J.
Murphy, Christopher


Dover, Den
Neale, Gerrard


du Cann, Rt Hon Edward
Nicholls, Patrick


Durant, Tony
Onslow, Cranley


Evennett, David
Osborn, Sir John


Eyre, Sir Reginald
Ottaway, Richard


Fairbairn, Nicholas
Parris, Matthew


Fallon, Michael
Pawsey, James


Favell, Anthony
Peacock, Mrs Elizabeth


Fookes, Miss Janet
Powell, Rt Hon J. E. (S Down)


Forsyth, Michael (Stirling)
Powley, John


Fox, Marcus
Price, Sir David


Freeman, Roger
Proctor, K. Harvey


Fry, Peter
Pym, Rt Hon Francis


Galley, Roy
Raffan, Keith


Gilmour, Rt Hon Sir Ian
Rathbone, Tim


Gorst, John
Rhodes James, Robert


Gower, Sir Raymond
Robinson, Mark (N'port W)


Griffiths, E. (B'y St Edm'ds)
Rossi, Sir Hugh


Hamilton, Neil (Tatton)
Rowe, Andrew






Rumbold, Mrs Angela
Thurnham, Peter


Ryder, Richard
Tracey, Richard


Sayeed, Jonathan
Twinn, Dr Ian


Shaw, Sir Michael (Scarb')
Vaughan, Sir Gerard


Shepherd, Colin (Hereford)
Viggers, Peter


Shersby, Michael
Walden, George


Silvester, Fred
Walker, Bill (T'side N)


Sims, Roger
Wall, Sir Patrick


Skeet, T. H. H.
Watts, John


Spencer, D.
Wells, John (Maidstone)


Squire, Robin
Wheeler, John


Stanbrook, Ivor
Winterton, Mrs Ann


Steen, Anthony
Winterton, Nicholas


Stern, Michael
Wood, Timothy


Stevens, Lewis (Nuneaton)
Yeo, Tim


Stevens Martin (Fulham)



Sumberg, David
Tellers for the Ayes:


Terlezki, Stefan
Mr. Barry Porter and


Thorne, Neil (Ilford S)
Mr. Tom Sackville




NOES


Abse, Leo
Corbyn, Jeremy


Alton, David
Cowans, Harry


Anderson, Donald
Craigen, J. M.


Archer, Rt Hon Peter
Crowther, Stan


Ashdown, Paddy
Cunningham, Dr John


Ashley, Rt Hon Jack
Dalyell, Tam


Ashton, Joe
Davis, Terry (B'ham, H'ge H'l)


Atkinson, N. (Tottenham)
Deakins, Eric


Bagier, Gordon A. T.
Dixon, Donald


Barnett, Guy
Dobson, Frank


Beckett, Mrs Margaret
Dormand, Jack


Beith, A. J.
Douglas, Dick


Bell, Stuart
Dubs, Alfred


Bennett, A. (Dent'n &amp; Red'sh)
Duffy, A. E. P.


Bermingham, Gerald
Dunwoody, Hon Mrs G.


Bidwell, Sydney
Eadie, Alex


Boyes, Roland
Eastham, Ken


Brown, Gordon (D'f'mline E)
Edwards, Bob (W'h'mpt'n SE)


Brown, Hugh D. (Provan)
Ellis, Raymond


Callaghan, Jim (Heyw'd &amp; M)
Evans, John (St. Helens N)


Campbell, Ian
Fatchett, Derek


Campbell-Savours, Dale
Field, Frank (Birkenhead)


Canavan, Dennis
Fields, T. (L'pool Broad Gn)


Carlile, Alexander (Montg'y)
Fisher, Mark


Carter-Jones, Lewis
Flannery, Martin


Cartwright, John
Forrester, John


Clark, Dr David (S Shields)
Foulkes, George


Clay, Robert
Freeson, Rt Hon Reginald


Cocks, Rt Hon M. (Bristol S.)
Freud, Clement


Cohen, Harry
Godman, Dr Norman


Coleman, Donald
Golding, John


Conlan, Bernard
Gould, Bryan


Cook, Frank (Stockton North)
Hamilton, James (M'well N)


Cook, Robin F. (Livingston)
Hamilton, W. W. (Central Fife)


Corbett, Robin
Hardy, Peter





Harrison, Rt Hon Walter
Park, George


Hart, Rt Hon Dame Judith
Patchett, Terry


Hattersley, Rt Hon Roy
Pendry, Tom


Haynes, Frank
Penhaligon, David


Heffer, Eric S.
Pike, Peter


Hogg, N. (C'nauld &amp; Kilsyth)
Powell, Raymond (Ogmore)


Home Robertson, John
Prescott, John


Howells, Geraint
Randall, Stuart


Hoyle, Douglas
Redmond, M.


Hughes, Dr. Mark (Durham)
Rees, Rt Hon M. (Leeds S)


Hughes, Robert (Aberdeen N)
Richardson, Ms Jo


Hughes, Roy (Newport East)
Roberts, Allan (Bootle)


Hughes, Sean (Knowsley S)
Roberts, Ernest (Hackney N)


Hughes, Simon (Southwark)
Robertson, George


Janner, Hon Greville
Robinson, G. (Coventry NW)


John, Brynmor
Rooker, J. W.


Johnston, Russell
Ross, Ernest (Dundee W)


Jones, Barry (Alyn &amp; Deeside)
Rowlands, Ted


Kaufman, Rt Hon Gerald
Sedgemore, Brian


Kennedy, Charles
Sheerman, Barry


Kilroy-Silk, Robert
Sheldon, Rt Hon R.


Kirkwood, Archibald
Shore, Rt Hon Peter


Lambie, David
Skinner, Dennis


Lamond, James
Smith, C.(Isl'ton S &amp; F'bury)


Leighton, Ronald
Smith, Rt Hon J. (M'kl'ds E)


Lewis, Ron (Carlisle)
Snape, Peter


Lewis, Terence (Worsley)
Soley, Clive


Loyden, Edward
Spearing, Nigel


McCartney, Hugh
Stott, Roger


McDonald, Dr Oonagh
Strang, Gavin


McGuire, Michael
Straw, Jack


McKay, Allen (Penistone)
Thomas, Dafydd (Merioneth)


McKelvey, William
Thomas, Dr R. (Carmarthen)


McNamara, Kevin
Thorne, Stan (Preston)


McTaggart, Robert
Tinn, James


McWilliam, John
Wainwright, R.


Madden, Max
Wallace, James


Marek, Dr John
Warden, Gareth (Gower)


Marshall, David (Shettleston)
Wareing, Robert


Martin, Michael
Weetch, Ken


Mason, Rt Hon Roy
Welsh, Michael


Maxton, John
White, James


Meacher, Michael
Wigley, Dafydd


Meadowcroft, Michael
Williams, Rt Hon A.


Michie, William
Winnick, David


Mikardo, Ian
Woodall, Alec


Millan, Rt Hon Bruce
Wrigglesworth, Ian


Mitchell, Austin (G't Grimsby)
Young, David (Bolton SE)


Morris, Rt Hon A. (W'shawe)



Morris, Rt Hon J. (Aberavon)
Tellers for the Noes:


Nellist, David
Mr. Robert Litherland and


O'Brien, William
Mr. Tony Lloyd.


Orme, Rt Hon Stanley

Question accordingly negatived.

Social Security

The Secretary of State for Social Services (Mr. Norman Fowler): I beg to move,
That the draft Supplementary Benefit (Requirements) Amendment Regulations 1984, which were laid before this House on 6th February, be approved.
It might be for the convenience of the House if we were also to take the following motions:
That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, praying that the Housing Benefits Amendment Regulations 1984 (S.I., 1984, No. 103), dated 6th February 1984, a copy of which was laid before this House on 6th February, be annulled.
That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, praying that the Housing Benefits Amendment (No. 2) Regulations 1984 (S.I., 1984, No. 104), dated 6th February 1984, a copy of which was laid before this House on 6th February, be annulled.
That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, praying that the Housing Benefits (Subsidy) Order 1984 (S.I., 1984, No. 110), dated 8th February 1984, a copy of which was laid before this House on 8th February, be annulled.
That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, praying that the Housing Benefits (Rate Support Grant) Order 1984 (S.I., 1984, No. 111), dated 8th February 1984, a copy of which was laid before this House on 8th February, be annulled.

Mr. Speaker: Is that agreeable?

Mr. Michael Meacher: It is.

Mr. Fowler: In considering the background to this debate it is important to recognise interconnecting policies— the need to contain public spending, the need to reduce inflation and the need to reduce taxation. Controlling public spending is important both economically and socially. The economic argument is well established, but high inflation is also socially a disaster for individuals whose incomes and savings are reduced by it and for business and industry which carry much of the burden of financing the welfare state. If evidence of that point is needed, we have only to go back to the Labour Government who presided over an increase in inflation of 110 per cent. and were forced to go running to the International Monetary Fund. The social consequences of those policy failures were vast and affected every person in this country —particularly particularly the elderly with limited savings. It is one of the Government's greatest and most basic achievements that inflation is now down to levels not experienced in Britain since the 1960s. That is of direct benefit to everyone in the country.
Few would now argue that no control of public spending is necessary. The fact is that, with social security spending, we are dealing with an increasing, not a decreasing, budget. Spending now runs at about £35·5 billion a year—more than half on pensioners and help for the elderly—while next year we estimate that it will increase to more than £37 billion. It is impossible to leave such sums out of account. It is also important to remember that we are price protecting the pensioner and preserving the value of supplementary benefit and unemployment benefit in announcements that have already been made.
At the same time, many of us in the House share the aspiration of bringing down the tax burden, particularly for the low-paid and pensioners. However, if we are to do that—if we are to raise tax thresholds—public spending must be contained. It is simply unrealistic to argue that tax should be brought down but at the same time no effort should be made to look at a budget, such as social security, when it accounts for 30 per cent. of all public spending.
We should perhaps also remember that to raise tax thresholds and allowances costs £200 million for each 1 per cent. and that therefore simply keeping pace with inflation costs about £1 billion.
We are seeking to reduce the rate of growth in social security spending. The reason why we have sought savings in housing benefit, as the Social Security Advisory Committee recognised, is that
there are some aspects of the housing benefit scheme which extend financial help further up the income ladder than anywhere else in the social security system and if cuts in social security spending are essential it might be reasonable to take resources from there rather than from the means-tested safety net".
There is no question but that spending on housing benefit has increased sharply. It goes to 7 million households covering 35 to 40 per cent. of the population and costs nearly £4 billion a year. The cost of rent and rate rebates and allowances has increased by 140 per cent. in real terms over the past 10 years. It means, for example, that a couple whose children have left home and who have no mortgage left to pay can get help with a £10 a week rates bill—their major housing cost—even though their income is up to £8,000 a year.
Perhaps worst of all, people are paying tax with one hand and receiving benefit with the other. More than 1 million families pay tax and receive benefit. More than 300,000 families are paying £7 a week in tax and at the same time receiving £5 a week in housing benefit. Containing the benefit cost is an important way in which to give ourselves some way to reduce the tax burden as well. In making such changes to the scheme, we should seek to protect the position of the poorest families. This we have sought to do in the changes contained in the regulations and orders. The result is that 4·5 million people, including 2·5 million pensioners, are not affected by the taper or minima changes that we are proposing. The result also is that no one on supplementary benefit or who is below the needs allowance level need lose. As I announced last week, we are retaining the existing minimum payment requirements below the needs allowance figure, to the benefit of about 40,000 people.
In the changes we are proposing, we have taken account of the recommendations of the Social Security Advisory Committee of points raised in the last debate on housing benefit in the House, and of points put to me by my hon. Friends and outside organisations, including local authorities. I made it clear in the last debate on housing benefit that I would consider all the points put to the Government. It is not possible to meet every point made, but I hope it is recognised that the Government have made important changes, and the result is a very different set of proposals from what were introduced last year.
Three major changes are contained in the Housing. Benefits Amendment Regulations and in the Supplementary Benefit (Requirements) Amendment Regulations. The first covers the position of non-dependants living in the household of the claimant. At present a claimant's entitlement to housing benefit is reduced if there is someone else in work living in the house. In other words, it is expected that the non-dependant should make a contribution rather than the taxpayer. The changes that we are proposing will affect the contributions of non-pensioners. In effect, they mean that a deduction for rent and rates of £8·20—£6·15 for rent and £2·05 for rates—will be made applying to everyone over the age of 18. Therefore, more will be expected of


the non-dependant in work and less from the taxpayer. Even those who criticise the change—I accept that the Social Security Advisory Committee is included — concede that the level of average earnings does not make this an unreasonable imposition when male average earnings are nearly £170 a week for adults and for 18 to 20-year-olds nearly £100 a week.
As the House will remember, we originally proposed that there should be a deduction also in respect of 16 to 17-year-old non-dependants. Their average earnings are £60 per week, and the contribution will be set at £3·10. However, that change will not come into effect until November, on the ground that local authorities will need time to process the information. It is one of a number of changes that the Government have deferred to make the administrative change as simple as possible in April.
I have to say that some of the criticism is ill-founded and at times misrepresents the position. The example given by the Shelter Housing Aid Centre was widely quoted, notably in The Times. A family with two children, one at school and the other, a 17-year-old, living at home, with a total income of £135 a week and paying £25 a week in rent and £8 per week in rates, will lose £2·95 a week in April and a total—not an addition—of £7·28 a week from November. That example omits to say that £3·10 of the loss comes from the non-dependant's deduction for the 17-year-old living at home. If he has an average income, he will be earning about £60 a week. In other words, in the example quoted by SHAC we are talking about a family income of about £10,000 a year. Even after the reduction, the taxpayer will still be paying about £1 a week towards the family's rent and rates.

Mr. Ralph Howell: Is it not absurd that we are still subsidising families with an income of £10,000 a year? Is the change that we have so laboriously made worth the candle if we still have not straightened out the absurd situation with regard to tax and benefits?

Mr. Fowler: I entirely agree with my hon. Friend's first point. One of our central points is that housing benefit is going too high up the income scale and is not being directed at those who are most in need.
If my hon. Friend will forgive me, I shall go on with my speech and not go into tax credits, which I have debated with him previously. If my hon. Friend is about to argue the case for tax credits, I shall listen to him with sympathy, but, unless his costings have changed radically, that is likely to lead to a substantial increase, not a decrease, in public spending.

Mr. Howell: I feel that I am being misrepresented as I have never supported the idea of a tax credit scheme. I have always supported some form of negative income tax scheme. I still maintain that it is futile to try to remedy these problems without doing so in a concerted way, with changes in taxation as well.

Mr. Fowler: I knew that I should not have crossed swords with my hon. Friend on this subject. As I understand it, I have my hon. Friend with me on my first proposition—that housing benefit is going too far up the income scale, and I gave an example of that. With regard to what my hon. Friend said about examining the social security system and making it more rational than it is at

the moment, he has my wholehearted support. He will know that I have already set up an inquiry into incomes and retirement and that we are in the process of setting up an inquiry into housing benefit. The whole point of those inquiries is to do what my hon. Friend most wants. I shall listen with interest to what he says in the debate.
The second major change concerns supplementary benefit and the position where the supplementary benefit recipient is not himself a householder. His benefit is at present increased by £3·10, which is intended as a contribution for him to make to housing costs. This contribution is not provided for 16 to 17-year-olds and the proposal here is that the addition should be withdrawn from 18 to 20-year-olds, subject to an important qualification.
If the householder is himself on supplementary benefit or housing benefit, the contribution will be added directly to the benefit paid to the householder. It should also be added that the supplementary benefit scale rate in any case rises from £16·50 to £21·45 at the age of 18, providing a significant increase in income at that age.
All told, those changes—the changes concerning the non-dependant and the supplementary benefit housing contribution—account for about half of the money being saved in 1984–85.

Mr. George Foulkes (Carrick, Cummock and Doon Valley): My hon. Friends and others can deal with the general question later, but I wrote to the Minister about a case in Girvan in my constituency of a young nondependent relative who was in part-time employment. Will the Secretary of State clarify what will happen to such people?

Mr. Fowler: I shall ask my hon. Friend the Minister for Social Security to deal with that point.
The bulk of the remainder of the savings comes from the third major change on tapers.
As the House will know, standard benefit is calculated as 60 per cent. of rent and rates plus a percentage of the amount that the claimant's income falls short of his needs allowance or minus a percentage of the amount by which income exceeds the needs allowance. The regulations are concerned only with the taper above the needs allowance. Originally we had proposed that this taper would be increased for rents from 21 per cent. to 31 per cent. from April, and for rates from 7 per cent. to 9 per cent. The rates proposal remains the same, but we have reduced the rents taper to 26 per cent. in April, thus having the effect of halving any rent losses at that date; and, as I have already made clear, we intend permanently to reduce the taper increase from 31 per cent. to 29 per cent. Below the needs allowance, the tapers remain the same and give a very heavy preference in favour of pensioners: for each pound by which a pensioner's income falls short of the needs allowance, his benefit is increased by 70p—50p for rent and 20p for rates — compared with 33p for non-pensioners.
In effect, in modifying the original proposals, the Government have reduced the taper changes permanently and have phased their introduction in April and November in the way that I have just described. The Government have postponed any change in the minimum payment levels and permanently reduced them. The rent minimum above the needs allowance will now increase to 50p only, not £1, and there will be no change in the minimum below the needs allowance.

Mr. Ivor Stanbrook: My right hon. Friend has mentioned the further changes that may be expected in November, and the regulations that we are discussing today come into operation in April. Will fresh regulations have to be laid before next November, and will we have to go through this exercise again?

Mr. Fowler: It certainly means that fresh regulations will have to be laid. We wish to consult the local authorities—my hon. Friend might find this helpful—to see whether, in the regulations for implementation in November, it will be possible to institute a limit upon losses. If so, it would be sensible to seek to do that. From everyone's point of view, it would be sensible to deal with the November changes in separate regulations.

Mr. Jerry Hayes: I fully appreciate my right hon. Friend's predicament and sympathise with him, but does he accept that this act of gross social and political folly will only widen the poverty trap for those in work whom many Conservative Members are here to protect?

Mr. Fowler: I do not agree with one word of what my hon. Friend has just said. I remind him that, if he is to sustain any of the promises that he made to his constituents about reducing taxation, at some stage he will have to face the fact that public spending will have to be checked. There is no point in his telling the public or the House that he can do both, because that would be false.
We have postponed other changes, such as the high rent area proposals. until November, when in any case benefits will be uprated and the impact of changes will be lessened. At the same time we shall examine the possibility of introducing a limit on individual losses in November. I hope that the hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Meacher), who talked about the initial reaction of local authorities, will support that.
What that means to the individual is that a substantial majority—1·3 million—of those who face any loss have had that loss reduced when compared with the original proposals. Nobody in work and with an income up to about £27 a week above the supplementary benefit level loses from the taper of minimum changes. No pensioner with an income of £10 above the state pension loses at all. Our reworked figures show that whereas the average loss in April was going to be 96p a week, it is now reduced to 69p, while the pensioner's loss is reduced from 85p to 56p. To put it another way, in April over 50 per cent. of all claimants and almost 60 per cent. of pensioners lose less than 50p and almost 80 per cent. of all claimants and 85 per cent. of pensioners lose less than £1.
As far as the savings themselves are concerned, the savings for 1984–85 would have originally been £230 million. The modifications reduce those savings to £185 million, which is partly offset by a saving of £12 million from postponing the increase in the child needs allowance. Here it should be emphasised that we are not taking away money that has already been given but postponing a real increase I had hoped to make, so that, instead of a £1 real increase in April 1984, there will be a 50p real increase in November followed by a further £1 in April 1985 which, incidentally, takes the real increase to £1·50 and above what we had planned.

Dr. Brian Mawhinney: There has been concern in recent weeks about the number of press reports of figures that seem to many hon. Members to be hard to

sustain on the basis of the documents that have been produced. Can my right hon. Friend or my hon. Friend the Minister for Social Security tell us how many people in April will be more than £2 a week worse off as a consequence and, more importantly, what income such people will have?

Mr. Fowler: I shall ask my hon. Friend to give the exact figures, but the most important figure is the one that I have already given. Four and half million people will not be affected in any way, and I have already given the figures for those who are losing less than £1. However, for the sake of accuracy, I shall ask my hon. Friend to give the figures under £2 and to break down the figures between £1 and £2.

Mr. Meacher: From what the Secretary of State said, I think the answer to his hon. Friend's question is that 110,000 pensioners and families will lose more than £2 a week, even after these concessions.
The right hon. Gentleman said that the public expenditure plan would not be altered as a result of these regulations. How is the £35 million saving to be financed?

Mr. Fowler: I am grateful to the hon. Member for Oldham, West for raising that matter. We originally planned a saving of £230 million. The modifications that I have announced reduce those savings to £185 million. That is partly offset by a saving of £12 million from postponing the increase in the child needs allowance. Clearly, the balance will have to be found partly from the contingency reserve and partly from offsetting measures inside the social security budget, but not—I repeat, not — from inside the housing benefit budget itself. We shall have to bring those measures before the House in the normal way, but at present I am not in a position to announce them.

Mr. Jeff Rooker: Will the Secretary of State explain what he has just said? Is it that decisions have been made about further cuts in the social security system but, because of the Budget and other matters, he is not in a position to tell the House, or are the Government still looking to see where in the system they can make the cuts? Will the right hon. Gentleman spell it out for us?

Mr. Fowler: The latter is true. We are examining a number of areas inside the social security system to see whether savings can be made. When we have finished that examination — and not before — we shall make an announcement on policy changes. As I said, a contribution would also be made from the contingency reserve.
As I also said, an important aspect of the modifications that we made to the original proposals is that they seek to minimise the additional administrative burdens on local authorities. Concern has been expressed that the original changes announced at the end of last year would have been difficult to implement by April. My hon. Friend the Minister for Social Security has discussed the revised proposals with the local authority associations, and they have confirmed that it is possible to implement them by April.
The views of the local authorities are also central to the No. 2 regulations. These provide a package of improvements, both to the administration of the scheme and to the benefits themselves. Many of the provisions arise directly from proposals made by the local authorities.


With the permission of the House, I will not cover them in detail, but, for instance, they include a provision for rent allowances to be paid fortnightly; they simplify the rules for calculating benefit; and they change the rules dealing with unreasonably high rents and paying benefit direct to landlords. Given the concern expressed about administrative problems flowing from changes in the housing benefit scheme at this time, my hon. Friend also asked the local authority associations whether they wished these measures to go ahead. They confirmed that they wish us to proceed with the changes contained in the No. 2 regulations, many of which simplify the administration of the scheme.

Mr. Foulkes: I am not clear from what the Secretary of State said exactly what the local authorities were replying to. What option did the Secretary of State offer to local authorities, other than going ahead with the proposals in the No. 2 regulations? What option was there? Was it Hobson's choice for the local authorities?

Mr. Fowler: Certainly not. As I said when I made the statement, the Housing Benefits Amendment (No. 2) Regulations — the larger regulations — gave local authorities the option that we would not go ahead with the regulations, if that was their wish. The regulations were produced for their convenience and were at their suggestion, but, if they thought that they would lead to administrative problems for them, we were prepared not to go ahead. It was after full consultation with them, and on their advice, that we decided to introduce them at this stage. My hon. Friend will say more on this subject when he sums up, but I can confirm that that option was given to local authorities.

Mr. Frank Field: What value does the right hon. Gentleman put on this commitment given by the local authority associations to the Secretary of State? In my area—the Wirral authority—tenants are appearing before the courts for non-payment of rates, having been taken to the courts by the finance department, although that same finance department has not paid out the rebates. There is chaos in many departments throughout the country. What worth can the right hon. Gentleman attach to local authorities saying that they can manage these changes?

Mr. Fowler: Clearly, there are parts of the country where problems exist, and the hon. Gentleman represents one such area. We put the proposals to representative organisations, such as the AMA, which—to put it in the most moderate and neutral language—cannot be said to be one of the greatest friends of this Government either generally or in the housing benefit proposals. If the representative organisations of local authorities say that they are able to institute the changes—changes which they themselves proposed and want implemented — it would be rather strange for the Government to reject them.
These changes are not just concerned with administration. They also contain some important improvements in the rules for benefit entitlement. For instance, where blind or disabled householders have a non-dependant — perhaps a grown-up son or daughter—living with them and helping to look after them, the normal deduction from housing benefit will not be made, whether or not the non-dependant is in work. I am sure that that will be welcomed.
Where a supplementary benefit recipient first takes on responsibility for housing costs—perhaps by moving to new accommodation—it will be possible for benefit to be backdated by up to six days. That will avoid such claimants immediately being put in arrears on their rent.
The benefit improvements covered by these regulations involve expenditure of nearly £4 million a year and will make important improvements in the benefit position of some claimants.
The remaining two orders to be debated later—the Housing Benefits (Subsidy) Order 1984 and the Housing Benefits (Rate Support Grant) Order 1984 — are concerned with the arrangements for reimbursing local authorities for the cost of benefits awarded and of administering the scheme.
The rate support grant order is a purely technical one. It defines the expenditure which is not counted as "relevant" in the context of rate support grant calculation.
The subsidy order, on the other hand, is more important, as it takes some significant steps to rationalise and regularise the reimbursement system.
In administration costs, it marks a move away from the essentially transitional system which has operated this year. Under that system, a distinction was drawn between "old" costs, arising from the rebates and allowances schemes which local authorities always ran, and "new" costs, which arose in implementing the new scheme and administering cases transferred from DHSS local offices.
That distinction is increasingly inappropriate as we move away from the start of the new scheme and would become increasingly unrealistic to operate. For 1984–85, therefore, we shall be moving to a specific grant system which nationally will more than cover the new costs as previously defined. The grant will be set at 60 per cent. in England, 65 per cent. in Scotland and 70 per cent. in Wales. The remaining administration costs will, as before the housing benefit scheme began, receive financial support from central Government through block grant to local authorities.
The other significant change in the subsidy order concerns the reimbursement of benefit expenditure. There will be no change in the rates for reimbursing benefit costs from this year. But the order takes steps to prevent a small number of local authorities from manipulating the scheme to get additional finance from the taxpayer. The tactic that these authorities—I stress it is a small number only—are seeking to adopt, when reduced to its basics, involves charging higher rents to those of their tenants who get all or most of their rent paid through housing benefit. The result is that the local authority can get substantially more income to use for the purpose it wishes at little or no cost to the tenant but at a cost to the taxpayer which could, if taken up generally, run into many millions of pounds.
There are two provisions in the order which will put a stop to that. Article 5(b) provides that if an authority introduces a system of differential rents involving higher rents for those on supplementary benefit, it will get reimbursed by the Government only at the lower rent level. But some authorities are considering adopting a more complicated manoeuvre. They propose to offer tenants a choice: one rent level will be charged if the tenant undertakes to do his own minor repairs; and a higher rent level will be charged if he opts for a repairs-inclusive tenancy. That might seem reasonable on the face of it, except that the differentials are to be set at a level that is totally disproportionate to the service being offered—for


example, a 25 per cent. increase. In one case at least, the publicity material provided to tenants makes it clear that the objective is to get extra finance from the taxpayer. Article 5(a) ensures that schemes of that sort will also not be underwritten by the Government.
There is also scope under the existing legislation for authorities which find themselves, either unintentionally or deliberately, with a surplus on their housing revenue accounts to make cash payments to tenants rather than to keep their rent increases down or to give tenants rent-free weeks. In the case of housing benefit tenants, this again is at the taxpayer's expense.
The matters covered by the regulations that we are debating today, and the background that I have sketched in my speech, are a demonstration of the need to take a fresh and deep look at the whole of the housing benefit scheme.
As I told the House last week, I intend to set up a review of the scheme as soon as possible—by that I mean in the next few weeks. Its objective will be to find ways of improving the operation of the scheme, making it simpler to understand and operate, and making sure that it is better targeted to give help where it is most needed without distributing ever-increasing sums of taxpayers' money to an ever-increasing number of claimants.
In its leader today The Times says that this is an inquiry only into the "local administration" of the scheme. It calls on me to extend the scope of the inquiry to cover
the machinery of the benefit itself".
I gladly give that assurance. That was exactly what I said in my statement last week. The inquiry has not been intended to look only at the local administration of the scheme. That is a fundamental misreading of the position by The Times leader writer.
I want the review to be completed quickly. That is why I envisage not a large and cumbersome group attempting to balance every conceivable interest but a small review team which can get to the heart of the matter quickly and bring forward clear conclusions from which the Government can determine the action that needs to be taken.

Mr. Archy Kirkwood: How quickly?

Mr. Fowler: It is difficult to give an answer until the group has been set up, but I hope that we shall get the report in the early autumn. It should be as early as possible.
The regulations that we are debating today represent an important step towards the better control and administration of the housing benefit scheme.
In modifying the original proposals for changes to the scheme, we have responded to the genuine concerns that have been expressed. But expenditure on social security is still growing rapidly—in total it is now forecast to be some £750 million higher next year than was expected at this time last year — a large part of that because of housing benefit. We have to find ways of containing that growth. Increasing social security expenditure—like all increases in public expenditure—means an increasing tax burden for all taxpayers. We can only relieve that burden, and particularly the burden on low-income families and pensioners, if we are prepared to make sensible economies where we can.
I therefore commend these regulations to the House.

Mr. Michael Meacher: I did not think that I would ever live to see the day when I would find myself looking forward to the concluding speech of the Minister for Social Security to provide us with details about a complex matter which were previously unavailable. Clearly, the main job of the Minister tonight will be at least as much to wind up the speech of the Secretary of State and to tell the House the things that he did not know as it will be to reply to the debate. We shall look forward to that speech with our usual enjoyment.
The purpose of these complicated amendment regulations is simple—to save the Secretary of State's face. He has been ground between two incompatible millstones. One is the unyielding demand from hard-nosed Treasury Ministers for yet another round of swingeing cuts in social security, and the other is the dawning political realisation, even permeating the Government Benches, that these cuts are increasingly widely seen as nasty, mean, spiteful and unpopular.
The amendments have therefore been devised as a balancing trick to give the impression to outraged public opinion that major concessions are being offered, w hilt; at the same time giving the nod to the Treasury that its ill-gotten predatory gains are safe. Like all conjuring tricks, it falls apart as soon as one examines it closely.
The Secretary of State positively oozed today with emollient statistics to obfuscate the one central fact that really matters: that the Government's hijacking of £230 million of benefits belonging to the poor is now to be reduced net by a mere £35 million, which itself will be reduced in November to about £15 million. In other words, cuts of £230 million which the Government's own Social Security Advisory Committee excoriated, in its own words, as
causing substantial loss in a largely indiscriminate fashion to families who have very low incomes indeed
are now to be reduced by all of £15 million, which will still leave poor pensioners and families £215 million worse off. Some concession. The Treasury must be laughing all the way to the bank.
I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Mr. Bowden), if it is not too embarrassing to him for me to do so, and to a few of his hon. Friends who opposed the Government in the first place because of the harshness of the cuts and because they severely hurt pensioners. Their reaction to the package will be a test of their mettle on two counts: the extent of the concessions is by any standards trifling — Conservative Members must realise that—and the penalty on pensioners has scarcely been lessened at all.
Let us take a single pensioner with a retirement pension and a modest occupational pension, which combined amount to £77 per week, who pays £18 per week rent and £5 per week rates. He is a fairly typical pensioner with a modest occupational pension. Under the Secretary of State's original proposals, that pensioner would have been deprived of £4·50 per week. He will now still lose, in April, £2·35 per week, but that loss will rise still further in November to £3·35 per week. In other words, the pensioner will still be deprived of three quarters of the original proposal. I ask Conservative Members whether that is a concession which satisfies the conscience of those who knew from the start that these housing benefit cuts were unjust and arbitrary.
If the cuts were mean and spiteful before, they are mean and spiteful now. More than 2 million of the poorest households in this country will still be heavily hit by the changes. More than 1 million pensioner households will still be penalised. The hon. Member for Harlow (Mr. Hayes) made an important point, and I hope that he will not be penalised for saying something that needed to be said clearly. There will still be an increased poverty trap for low-income families. Those families will be faced with a marginal tax rate in April of 74 per cent., rising to 77 per cent. in November. I ask Conservative Members to consider what that means. It is a far higher marginal tax rate than that paid by any of Britain's most highly paid executives.
The rates taper will still increase immediately to 9p in April, so that the changes will still not give any help to low-income home owners. They will still lose as much as under the original proposals. Indeed, if they have children, they will lose more than before, because of the failure to increase the needs allowance addition. That is quite contrary to the Government's commitment to the family and home ownership. In addition, more than 250,000 households on supplementary benefit will still be penalised as a result of the increased non-dependant deductions. In some cases they will be penalised by more than £3 per week, despite misleading and complacent claims by the Prime Minister, who has excelled herself even by her standards of megaphone demagogy, to the effect that the poorest families on supplementary benefit were not affected. The fact is that they are affected. The Government have made no attempt to prevent these proposed losses.
I think that it was the hon. Member for Orpington (Mr. Stanbrook) who said that local authorities would now be faced with the huge task of implementing two sets of complex changes in the regulations. There are, therefore, likely to be even more serious delays and even further administrative chaos in both April and November. Worse still, the Association of Metropolitan Authorities, which represents 76 big cities, has now warned that, despite the concessions, some families will still lose £10 per week in November and that it looks increasingly difficult — although it would clearly be desirable — to impose ceilings on the cuts in November. That is what the association is now saying, although I hope that it is wrong.
For all those reasons, it is therefore crystal clear that these so-called concessions are no more than cosmetic; the small print of minor technical adjustments. Even if that is not so, there remains one fundamental question: why are pensioners and families in poverty having £215 million taken out of their pockets at all? That is the central question. I want to meet the Government's case head on, because the more closely one looks at it, the clearer it becomes that the Government's case—if one can dignify it with that title—does not stand up to examination.
The Government try to justify their action on the ground that housing benefits now cost £3·75 billion per year. They say that that cannot be afforded, and the Secretary of State repeated that today. They say that the money should, therefore, be allocated more selectively. There are two answers to that. First, although the total cost has grown markedly, it is not because the benefits were ever awarded more generously by the Government. In fact, the reverse is true. When the housing benefits were first introduced in

April 1983, 2·5 million households took a cut in housing benefit. Now the cost has soared, because the Government have deliberately pushed up the level of rents through the roof. There has been an increase of 40 per cent. in real terms since 1979. Furthermore, the number of households becoming entitled through poverty has risen enormously as a result of the Government's policies, and principally as a result, of course, of mass unemployment.
There are now, officially, no fewer than 7·5 million people on the poverty line who are dependent on means-tested benefits, and therefore entitled to certificated housing benefit. Another 1·5 million are officially recognised to be no better off, although they do not claim the supplementary benefit to which they are entitled. Therefore, there are 9 million people on the official poverty line in Thatcherite Britain today. That is one in six of the population. They are in that position mainly because of the Government's policies, so why should they now be punished for being poor through no fault of their own? The Government must answer that crucial question, to which they have given no answer because they cannot do so.

Dr. Mawhinney: The hon. Gentleman knows that I listen carefully to his speeches, and I am grateful to him for giving way. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State pointed out that a family with an income of £10,000 per year would still be receiving £ 1 per week in benefit. I happen to agree with my right hon. Friend that that is an indefensible arrangement. The hon. Gentleman has thrown the word "poverty" about fairly loosely without defining it. Does he believe that a family with an income of £10,000 per year should be receiving £1 per week from the Government in benefit?

Mr. Meacher: The family that the Secretary of State mentioned is not on the poverty line. I am not for a moment suggesting that such families are on the poverty line. I am talking about the 9 million people on the poverty line. That family still receives housing benefit because, as I have said, rents have risen to astronomic levels. In some areas rents are exceedingly high. However, I agree that it would be much better to have lower rents, and then such families would not have to obtain rental assistance.

Dr. Mawhinney: It is good of the hon. Gentleman to give way, but he has not really answered my question. I asked him whether he believed, for whatever reason, that a family obtaining £10,000 per year should receive £1 per week in benefit—yes or no?

Mr. Meacher: I do not believe that families on £10,000 or families on £30,000 should be receiving housing aid. In a moment I may say a little about those who have incomes four or five times higher than the income of that family and who still, quite indefensibly, receive substantial sums of money. If the hon. Gentleman will just wait, I shall give an accurate quote in a moment.

Mr. Fowler: I think that perhaps I missed the hon. Gentleman's answer to the first question asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Dr. Mawhinney). The relevance of the family on £10,000 per year is that it is the very example given by the Shelter Housing Aid Centre in its letter to all hon. Members. That letter has been much quoted. Indeed, it has been quoted in The Times at least twice. Does the hon. Gentleman think that the position is defensible?

Mr. Meacher: What SHAC does is a matter for it—[HON. MEMBERS: "Answer the question."] SHAC is a voluntary organisation with an exceedingly good record of drawing attention to the results for housing of the Government's policies. I have already fully answered the question. That family is not living in poverty and is not one of the 9 million or one out of six who, under this Government, have fallen into poverty. I have said that it is an anomaly for families on £10,000 a year—if they are on that level — to receive housing aid, but the answer is to reduce the level of rents, or not to allow them to go through the roof as they have done with an increase of 40 per cent. in real terms over the past five years. That is what is wrong.
There is another reason why the Government's excuses for a mean and shabby attack on the poor is so threadbare. I return to the words of the Secretary of State, which he used to justify his action last week when he made a statement to the House. He said that
it is essential for the Government to maintain firm control of public expenditure, and in the last 10 years cash expenditure on the former rent and rate rebates scheme has increased tenfold, an increase of 140 per cent. in real terms."—[Official Report, 6 February 1984; Vol. 53, c. 612.]
On that basis, I have news for the Government. Over exactly the same period, since 1972–73, mortgage interest tax relief has almost doubled in real terms. It is now costing the country £2·75 billion, not much less than housing benefit. Not only that, but it is heavily concentrated on the rich, and here I am coming to the point made by the hon. Member for Peterborough (Dr. Mawhinney).
According to a recent parliamentary answer, which I have with me, published on 3 February, at c. 392, those on £30,000 a year pick up a cool £22 a week in mortgage interest tax relief. I ask a question of Conservative Members—do they believe, when they claim that there are great restraints on national resources, that that can be justified?

Mrs. Edwina Currie: By exactly what proportion did the Labour Government of 1974 to 1979 reduce mortgage interest tax relief?

Mr. Meacher: The Labour Government of 1974 to 1979 did not raise the ceiling for the receipt of mortgage interest tax relief from £25,000 to £30,000. A more retrograde step at a time of limited resources for housing I can scarcely imagine.

Mr. Fowler: What is the policy of the Labour party if, God forbid, a Labour Government should come in? What would the incoming Labour Government do about mortgage interest tax relief?

Mr. Meacher: I have shown clearly what we would not do, which is what this Government have done—increase the ceiling from £25,000 to £30,000. There could not be a greater waste of £60 million of public expenditure than that. I can gladly answer that, in my view—I am only one of the contributors to party policy—we shall in the next four or five years reach an agreed policy. It is my view that mortgage interest tax relief should be payable only at the standard rate. It is unjustifiable for Conservative Members, many of whom are beneficiaries from the payment of mortgage interest tax relief in the higher tax range, to complain. That cannot be defended

and I hope that the next Labour Government in four years' time will stop that. I shall play my full part to secure that aim.
How does the Secretary of State morally justify chopping back the pensioners' meagre housing benefit by £2 to £3 a week — that will still happen to many pensioners in April, even after the concessions—while at the same time casting a blind eye to this housing largesse poured out to their well-heeled friends in the City and the plush boardrooms?

Mr. Fowler: Of the average losses to pensioners, of those who will lose—and we must remember that the majority do not lose—59 per cent. will lose less than 50p, 26 per cent. will lose between 51p and £1 and only 1 per cent. of pensioners will lose between £2·50 and £3.

Mr. Meacher: According to an answer that I received from the Secretary of State, 50,000 pensioners will lose between £2 and £3 a week in the changes. The right hon. Gentleman clearly dodged my question, which was what justification can there be for robbing 50,000 pensioners of between £2 and £3 a week when there are people on £30,000 a year or more who are getting £22 a week tax relief for housing? Will the right hon. Gentleman answer that specific question?

Mr. Fowler: If the hon. Gentleman wants my position on this, I can confirm what he says about pensioners and the figure of between £2 and £3. As to mortgage interest tax relief, the hon. Gentleman has to remember that. while the threshold for housing benefit for the needs allowance has kept pace with inflation, the ceiling of tax relief has been increased only once since 1974.

Mr. Meacher: It was indeed increased only once, and that was by this Government in the past year, when the ceiling was raised, wrongly and indefensibly, from £25,000 to £30,000. It is clear that the Secretary of State has no answer to how it can be justified to chop back housing benefit for 50,000 pensioners by between £2 to £3 a week and at the same time allow 150,000 people £22 a week in housing tax relief.
There is a third point which effectively completes the demolition of the Government's case. Ministers ask, and the Secretary of State said it again this afternoon, "Where is the money to come from?" If the aim is to save £200 million, as I have already said, paying mortgage interest tax relief only at the standard rate, plus not raising the ceiling from £25,000 to £30,000, would save exactly that sum.
The House need not take my word for it. I shall quote the words of the Daily Telegraph, which is not normally a supporter of the Militant Tendency, which said on 20 January:
It hardly seems equitable to cut welfare spending on the relatively poor in the name of good housekeeping and then reward owner occupiers with large subsidies (while making it more difficult for first-time buyers to purchase by distorting the market and effectively raising housing prices).
I go further. How can one justify cutting back the widower's or the pensioner's mite when the world of perks, fringe benefits and tax allowances—the fiscal welfare state—which is so cosily inhabited by the rich is allowed to continue? Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman will explain how fringe benefits, tax allowances and perks on a scale far greater than he is talking about have been allowed to grow so massively and now exist on a gigantic scale.
The Tory party finds the payment of £3·75 billion of housing benefit to the poor an unsupportable burden but has no trouble in supporting the dishing out of tax relief for pension contributions, life assurance, mortgage interest and investment income surcharge exemption. The total of that, according to the latest Inland Revenue figures, costs the country a crippling £9 million a year.
It is no wonder that the Tory party and its big business friends do not find that too much of a burden—after all, they do not pay for it. Those tax remissions are paid for by the rest of the community, which is forced to pay higher taxes than it would otherwise have to pay in order to recoup the Exchequer for the plundering of the tax system by the rich. What is so sickening, nauseating and sordid about this whole mean little exercise of a housing benefit being rammed home today by the Government's minus majority is that the pensioners and the families in poverty are the stool-pigeons for the next round of Government handouts to the rich in next month's Budget.

Mr. Fowler: rose—

Mr. Meacher: I shall give way in a moment. That is what lies behind this mean and spiteful measure, making way for yet further tax handouts for the rich. If the pensioners and the families in poverty go to the wall, that is just tough luck, in the eyes of the modern Tory party's values.

Mr. Fowler: The hon. Gentleman is talking a great deal about pensioners, and I entirely share his concern. One of the matters to which he referred and questioned was the encouragement that is given to people to join occupational pension schemes. Is it the policy of his party to do away with that relief as well?

Mr. Meacher: I have noted that it is the policy of the Government apparently to do away with the partnership of occupational pension schemes with the state, with their ill-thought-out and stupid plans to support portable pensions. I think that the right hon. Gentleman might do well to consider his own question, because he has no answer to that.

Mr. Rooker: Is my hon. Friend aware that there is no clearer sign of a Minister who is bankrupt than for him to continue saying to the Opposition, "What is your policy, what would you do?" when he is putting proposals to the House which he clearly does not wish to be debated?

Mr. Meacher: My hon. Friend is entirely right. I do not think that it will do the Secretary of State much good to try to deflect attention from what the nation knows to be a shabby little scheme. The House is witnessing today only the last of a series of manoeuvres which have become the symbol of Thatcherite government. It is the constantly recurring theme of redistribution from poor to rich. I give credit to the Government for the fact that they have at least pursued it with single-minded ruthlessness.
Benefits for the poor have been reduced since 1979 by approximately £2,000 million. It is no accident that the Tory handouts to the rich over the same period come to approximately the same total. If one aggregates the reductions in the higher tax rates, the increased exemptions from investment income surcharge and the huge concessions that have literally riddled the capital transfer tax and capital gains tax with loopholes, one sees

that that has transferred no less than an extra £2,600 million in total to the pockets of those who can take advantage of it, almost exclusively the rich. The Secretary of State comes to the House today and asks the House how the money is to be raised. What a nerve. It is for those who have already been cosseted enough by tax privilege under this Government that 1,300,000 pensioners and 550,000 low-income households will, if the motion is approved, be forced in April to take yet another cut in their meagre livelihood around the poverty line, and that is why the exercise stinks.
I have one final point to make on the financial effects of the motion. I wish to be fair to the Secretary of State, but I continue to be troubled by the uneasy feeling that I may have been a little too generous to him. The point concerns that which I raised earlier — how the £35 million net reduction in the housing benefit cuts this April will be financed. Hitherto I have given the Secretary of State credit for making at least some marginal gesture in the direction of his critics, but now I am not so sure. Is it not unprecedented for a Minister to come to the House and make proposals when he still does not know how they will be financed?
In 13 years in Parliament, I have never known a Minister who has done that. I therefore ask the Secretary of State whether he will give an unequivocal pledge to the House that this £35 million will be recouped from the contingency fund and not by further cuts in social security benefits. He would not give that assurance earlier. I put it to the right hon. Gentleman that he should reconsider that. If he will not give that assurance, the impression with which he started his speech, namely, that he was making concessions, degenerates into a black farce of transparent hypocrisy, because he is doing nothing of the kind. If there are no concessions — and that is what he was really saying—if poverty is merely redistributed, the whole idea of softening these cuts is one big unadulterated PR scheme.
Lastly, there is the question of the Secretary of State's proposed review of the housing benefit scheme. One must ask, in view of what happened previously, whether this is pure cosmetic in order to get round an embarrassing Back-Bench revolt, or whether it is for real. It is essential that the review team should be able to examine all the options available for developing housing benefit, not only those which do not involve extra costs. That is not only my view; it is the view of the Conservative think tank, The Economist.
The latest issue of the The Economist of 11 February says:
The shambolic housing benefit scheme introduced in 1982 to make housing relief more straightforward has done the opposite.
It continues:
The cuts announced last year made a bad thing worse.
It concludes:
The ideal result would be a complete re-think.
The question is whether there will be a complete rethink. There certainly ought to be, since the scheme is still an administrative shambles of unprecedented magnitude throughout the country. Liverpool city, for example, has not dealt with all the cases from a partial start in November 1982, 15 months ago. The rent increases introduced in July 1983 are only now being taken into account. Greenwich takes three months to process new


applications. It is also dealing with 3,500 changes of circumstances. It takes on average three to six months to implement a change.
Manchester has a case load of 101,000 claims for housing benefit, but it has no way of identifying non-dependants, and it believes that to implement these latest regulations properly it may have to reassess all its cases. To take Hackney, which must surely be one of the poorest boroughs in the country, there are still 7,000 to 8,000 claimants without housing benefit to which they are entitled. None of those examples that I have quoted is in any way exceptional.
When the Secretary of State or his hon. Friend the Minister for Social Security winds up the debate and gives the House the more detailed information that has been promised, I should like answers to some precise questions. For a change, it would help if we could have some precise answers. Will the housing review have a nil extra cost remit, which, I might say, is incompatible with a scheme that is smoothly administered? Will the review team consist not merely of officials and local authority representatives but of representatives of voluntary organisations, such as the citizens advice bureaux, which have made a major contribution in this area, and welfare rights organisations? Will it be free to look at a genuinely unified housing scheme which includes tax relief housing benefits? Will it take evidence from independent bodies? Above all, when the report is ready, will it be published? If the review is not yet another piece of divertionary camouflage, I can tell the Secretary of State that we shall be looking for positive answers to all those questions.
It was, I think, Disraeli who said, when asked to define the difference between a disaster and a catastrophe, that if Mr. Gladstone fell in the Thames that would be a disaster, and if anybody pulled him out that would be a catastrophe. There are few people—and this includes Conservative Members—who do not know, if they are honest with themselves, that this half-baked scheme is a disaster. If the Treasury, which has virtually taken control of the scheme from the Secretary of State, does not recognise what it is doing to some of the poorest people in the country, and if it does not withdraw these cuts altogether prior to the publication of the report by the review team, that will be a catastrophe.

Mr. Andrew Bowden: I shall bear with fortitude the comments made about me by the hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Meacher). Although he made some powerful points, they were largely spoilt by exaggeration. His exaggerations were so numerous that he nearly persuaded me to vote with the Government tonight, but they were not quite as bad as that.
The hon. Member for Oldham, West was not entirely fair to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State or to his colleagues in the Department. I pay tribute to those Ministers, who have the incredibly difficult task of handling a massive budget, of ensuring fairness to many sections of the community and of balancing one priority against another. It is comparatively easy for me or for my hon. Friends on the Government Benches to criticise the way in which that money is used. I do not envy them their job, and I have no wish to have responsibility for carrying out their duties.
I have no doubt that the Ministers are men of genuine compassion who care for people. It is worth putting it on

the record, especially in the light of the comments of the hon. Member for Oldham, West, that Britain now has the largest-ever social security budget in real terms State pensions have reached their highest level of purchasing power and, in real terms, nearly every benefit has a higher purchasing value than it did when the Labour Government left office. I put that on the record to get this debate in perspective and in the context of the comments of the hon. Member for Oldham, West.
My complaints about the new housing benefit regulations are almost entirely concentrated on pensioners. As the House knows, there are more than 9 million pensioners in Britain. Sometimes, when people discuss pensioners' problems, there is a tendency to oversimplify them. Some say that pensioners have a terrible time, that they are all half-starved, freezing to death and only just existing. At the other end of the scale, some say that pensioners have never had it so good, that they are living well, are quite warm and well fed, and are well looked after.
The truth is that there are groups within those 9 million pensioners which have special problems. One such group, which we shall not discuss in detail tonight, is the nearly 1 million pensioners who do not draw a supplementary pension although they are entitled to do so. They are living below the poverty line. Another group which has concerned me since I have been a Member of the House is made up of those pensioners who live on small additional incomes that take them above the pension and supplementary pension rates, and therefore just above the needs allowance. That group, which obtains the extra income either through small occupational pensions or through investments and savings, have had an extremely difficult time during the past 20 years.
The House should not forget — as each general election goes by it is easier to forget — that those pensioners lived through the second world war and that some of them lived through the first world war. They scrimped and saved in difficult times to prepare for their retirements so that they would have something spar: from the state pension, and so that they could be independent of the state and of their families.
But what has happened? We know that the value of those occupational pensions has been destroyed by 86 per cent. in 10 years. Imagine the bitterness of many pensioners whose incomes are only marginally above the incomes of those who receive the state pension and the supplementary pension. They do not receive many of the concessions that are available to those on supplementary pensions, and in many cases they lose out on concessionary fares, special prices, and reduced prices for cinemas and theatres. They find that, having saved for most of their lives and having managed to put a little aside, their standard of living is below that of those who receive the basic and supplementary pensions. I ask my right hon. Friend not to underestimate how deep that bitterness goes.
Governments—mostly those formed by the Labour party—are largely responsible for the destruction of the value of occupational pensions. The little compensation for that group that can be provided by the Government comes in the form of housing benefit, which is why I so deeply deplore the cuts that the Government intend to impose.
My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State argues, rightly, that inflation is the greatest enemy of the pensioner and those who receive housing benefits. However, out of


his budget of £37 billion, he is talking about taking £45 million from pensioners, which in accounting terms is nothing. Let us imagine that someone running a business with a turnover of £37 billion was told at the end of the financial year by his chief accountant that, although the turnover was £37 billion, he could not account for £45 million. I do not know what £45 million is as a percentage of £37 billion, but it must be tiny. If I were the chairman of that company, I would say to the chief accountant, "Sit down and have a glass of whisky. You have done an extremely good job if you have lost only £45 million." The sum about which we are talking bears no relation to beating inflation or to controlling Government expenditure. I am not asking for the moon; I am asking for £45 million out of that total expenditure.
We are told by economic experts—not many of us trust economic experts, unless we happen to be in the profession, which I am not—that in preparation for the Budget things look good. We may be able to keep expenditure on the public sector borrowing requirement at about the £8 billion mark, which is excellent news for the Government. We are told that there may be some leeway for tax concessions when the Chancellor of the Exchequer presents his Budget next month. If that is true, it undermines the basic argument presented by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State in relation to housing benefit.
More than 1 million pensioners will be affected, and we have already heard some figures. My hon. Friend the Minister for Social Security was good enough to reply to my parliamentary question on this matter, but I received his reply only a couple of hours before this debate. I gather that 210,000 pensioners will lose more than £1 in April and that 90,000 of them will lose more than £1·50, that 50,000 will lose more than £2 and that 10,000 will lose more than £2·50. That is a level of take which I cannot support, and that is why, most reluctantly, I shall have to go into the Lobby tonight against the regulations.
When we play with figures of this type, let us consider what they mean to an individual. Take the example of a single pensioner who will lose more than £2 in April. His income will be about £4,000 a year — his state retirement pension and his occupational pension—and he will be paying, say, £18 rent a week and £5 rates, yet he will lose more than £2 in April; and if it carries on to November— perhaps the proposals will not go on till then—he will lose more than £3 a week. In addition, I estimate that he is paying between £8 and £9 a week in tax. Having paid tax on the money to earn his rather meagre occupational pension, and having seen its purchasing value destroyed in 10 years, he is paying tax on top of that as well.
Perhaps one of the priorities of the Chancellor in his Budget must be significantly to increase the age allowance for pensioners, which at present stands at the moderate sum of £2,360 for the single pensioner and at £3,755 for the married pensioner.
The Secretary of State made effective play with the importance of the battle against inflation, and I endorse that. Although inflation has been tamed, it is not yet beaten, and I agree with his description of inflation as being socially disastrous. I am simply saying that it is not possible, in the context of the sums about which I am talking in relation to pensioners, to claim that they are in any way a significant factor at any level in the battle

against inflation. When occupational pensioners—who really were suffering a few years ago under the then Labour Government when they were facing inflation rates of 25 per cent. a year—consider the actions of this Government and look at the present position, I am sure that they will bear that factor in mind as well.
It seems from statements that have been made that more will be taken from pensioners in November and that, by that time, the difference between what the Government announced originally and what will take effect in November will be very small indeed. I repeat that there is still time for my right hon. Friend to reconsider the position. I cannot in all conscience support these housing benefit proposals. They are fundamentally unjust and not in accordance with the principles of the party of which I have been proud to have been a member for 39 years.

Mr. Sean Hughes: In his statement to the House on 6 February, the Secretary of State referred to the review of the housing benefits scheme which he trusted would make the scheme as simple as possible. If a camel is a horse designed by a committee, we can appreciate what the second item on the agenda was. It was the design of the housing benefits scheme, because it is a mess. It is an administrative maze which is incomprehensible to the recipients and ridiculously over-complicated for those who must organise it.
The simple, clearly understood effect of the proposals is that the changes will be harsh. The Social Security Advisory Committee's comments on the amended regulations were that the changes would
have an unduly harsh effect on many individuals
and that
for many people, the loss of income will be very severe.
Consequently, the committee called on the Secretary of State to withdraw the draft regulations completely. The changes announced last week have not weakened that condemnation in the least.
The effects of the amendments nationally have been described by my hon. Friends and by some Conservative Members at various times in the House, but the national figures do not convey the real extent of the problem, the disproportionate effect that will be felt in deprived areas such as in my constituency.
Under the regulations as proposed by the Secretary of State in November, about 41 per cent. of the people in my borough — a borough already over-subscribed to the housing benefits scheme—would have been adversely affected. Despite what the Secretary of State described last week as the Government's decision to modify the proposed changes, the burden which falls on so many of my constituents will hardly be less onerous, and my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Meacher) referred to the Government's conjuring trick performed with these trifling modifications.
A few figures will demonstrate the point. Last November, taper changes were estimated to affect 4,066 tenants in my borough. That number is now massively cut to 3,926. Of that total last November, we estimated that 2,245 pensioners would be affected. Now that figure has been slashed to 2,060. Of owner-occupiers affected by November's proposals, the estimated number for my borough was 2,380. Now it is dramatically reduced to 2,142. Therefore, whereas a total of 6,446 people were likely to have been affected by the November 1983


proposals in my borough, that figure has been reduced incredibly to only 6,068. Hon. Members will not be surprised to hear, therefore, that the Secretary of State's most recent proposals did not provoke dancing in the streets of Knowsley, South.
All of that is compounded by the levels of deprivation already recorded in my constituency. Hon. Members have frequently heard my catalogue of misery, although apparently the Government have not appreciated how appalling is the state of affairs. In the words of the Social Security Advisory Committee,
The prospect of very large sudden drops in income for families, who are already poor seems to us to be the most objectionable aspect of these proposals and the one which most requires amendment.
My borough has estimated, in calculating the effects of these amendments on the working of the housing benefits scheme in Knowsley, that there are over 6,000 possible permutations to be considered, depending on individual circumstances. It is a strange and complex game which nobody wins and of which hardly anybody understands the rules. Indeed, the Social Security Advisory Committee declared that the amendments would
introduce further confusion into the administration of a benefit which has been suffering from a particularly troubled birth.
In some areas benefit has not yet been implemented. Where the system is in operation, payment has been subject to interminable delays. I appreciate that Orwellian references have been somewhat overdone during the first six weeks of this year, but if ever a system befitted the year, it is the housing benefit scheme.
People are characterised as householders and homes are classed as households or non-households, as the case may be. These people do not have sons and daughters; they have dependants and non-dependants. Relatives dare not stay too long with them lest they be classed as sub-tenants. The new riddle is, "When is a sub-tenant not a sub-tenant?—When he is a non-dependant." A person's income is no longer that easily understood concept so beloved by us all as we complete our tax returns. Income is now defined in some Government circles more by exclusions than inclusions.
When we come to define rents, we enter realms which are made exotic by the introduction of mooring charges for houseboats and site fees for caravans or mobile homes. A "mobile home" is a contradiction in terms given the time that it takes to calculate housing benefits payments. Also included in the definitions are contributions paid for accommodation in almshouses that are provided by a charitable housing association.
Rent can include service charges that range from the cost of a shared television aerial, which is included, to payment for window cleaning, which is excluded, unless the cleaning is for other than communal areas, in which case it is included.
Local authorities have instructions to take such factors into account. I hope that they are not expected to take them too seriously. My constituents, well versed in these definitions and having worked out their income and its position relative to their needs allowance, can proceed with their calculations to ascertain their entitlement to housing benefit. It comes as no surprise to discover in the Social Security Advisory Committee report that the committee was unable to ascertain from the Secretary of State or from his Department the information that it needed on the full extent of the consequences of the proposed cuts.
If the Department concerned does not understand the repercussions of what it does, how are lesser mortals to understand how the benefits are to be calculated? Do not the Government realise the hostility which such complexity promotes? If benefits are not easily understood, more and more people will believe that the regulations are meant to prevent their obtaining assistance rather than facilitating access to it.
I am reminded of Palmerston's famous comment on the Schleswig-Holstein question when he recalled how only three people really understood it. The first person who understood it was the Prince Consort, and he was dead. The second person was a German professor, and he had gone mad. The third was himself, and he had forgotten it. If Palmerston were alive today—and he is not, despite the fantasies of some Conservative Members—he would not find three people who understood the housing benefit system.

Mr. Alan Haselhurst: A difficulty for some of my right hon. and hon. Friends and me is to distinguish our position from that taken by the hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Meacher). We may have some reservations about the Government's position, but we would not wish to see ourselves grouped with much of what he said. The extravagance of his language matched only the profligacy of the economic thinking that seemed to suffuse much of his speech. I do not want it to be thought that I have any part in much of the thinking behind his attack on the Government, but there are some of us who are extremely worried and upset that we should find ourselves in a somewhat unhappy situation.
I regret that we appear to be in the business of taking away benefit, even to a small extent, from retired people who are not among the most well-off in society and that we seem to be contributing to a worsening of the poverty trap. Neither of these things seems to be part of our philosophy, nor part of our long-term aims to which our declared policies are directed. Apparently it is national economic need and the level of income to which housing benefits presently reaches that have caused the Government to make changes and to bring the regulations before us.
Setting aside national economic need, I am prepared to accept that there is a case for re-examining housing benefits and reappraising, and possibly readjusting, their coverage and scope. I am worried that it should be done in the way that is set out in the regulations. I do not accuse my right hon. Friend or his ministerial colleagues of malice or disregard of those in need. I understand how the situation has come about. They have had to find something which they think will do the least damage, and perhaps they have had to do so in a time scale which is not the most ideal. They are therefore open to criticism from those of us who are concerned about the effects that a hurried decision may bring about. However, it is a forced decision and it is a great pity. I cannot see how it can be denied that there are ill effects for some deserving recipients of housing benefits.
My worry turns to embarrassment when I link the regulations with the fact that not a year ago we were increasing the scope of tax relief on mortgage interest I shall not go into the realms of the hon. Member for Oldham, West, and I think that everyone will have taken note of the direction in which he seems to want to propel


the Labour party for the next general election. I merely say to my Front Bench colleagues that, when the decision was taken on mortgage interest relief last year, not many of us thought that we should be linking it in our minds with some withdrawal of benefits from those on lower incomes. We might have judged the mortgage move differently had we known what was to come.
My embarrassment turns to concern when I recognise that some of those who will be adversely affected are in the elderly age group who have found themselves dragged reluctantly into the tax-paying bracket. They may feel that they are being penalised twice over. It seems that we are hitting those who have practised thrift and good housekeeping throughout their lives. They will not see the Government's proposals as a very apt reward.
If the Government say that it is paramount that savings must be made, surely another way could be found. We are only a few weeks away from the Budget. It is a pity that the mechanics of government seem to be so wooden that there cannot be an overall assessment of how certain things could be done. I know that there are conventions attached to the Budget and that much lies in the prerogative of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. However, I cannot help concluding that the Government's position on housing benefits could have been reassessed in a wider context if there were a proved need to balance the books in a certain way.
Having expressed my anxiety, perhaps not as strongly, fluently and ably as my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Mr. Bowden), whose concern for the elderly is well known in the House and does him great credit, I recognise that the Government, through my right hon. Friend and his colleagues, have attempted to retrieve the situation to some extent and have listened to the anxieties expressed by many of my right hon. and hon. Friends.
I welcome the review. It is important, and I hope that it demonstrates the recognition that conditions will be improved. If I can be persuaded by my hon. Friend the Minister for Social Security that that is so, I may give the Government the benefit of the doubt. At best, I can go into the Government Lobby with only a feeling of acute discomfort about this affair, as this measure is one for which the need has not been unambiguously proved. This is something which, with a little political dexterity and a little more time, could have been avoided. It means an extra obstacle for us in the path towards the just society which Conservative Members are intent on trying to create.

Mr. Archy Kirkwood: It is a pleasure to take part in the debate. I should like to position my views between those of the hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Meacher) and those of the hon. Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Mr. Bowden). I agree with the hon. Member for Kemptown that the hon. Member for Oldham, West did his cause no justice by using such hyperbole.
I refer to the administration of the scheme in terms of statutory instrument No. 103 on the housing benefit regulations. By any objective standards, the changes have been dogged by confusion and uncertainty since they were

introduced. However it may be measured, the administration of the scheme has been bungled. The Minister and his Department are guilty of a degree of incompetence which has had a clear result. The housing benefit scheme, introduced in 1982, was brought in with the intention of streamlining the existing system. It was intended to make the system more straightforward. But it has done the opposite.
In 1982, there were two different ways of obtaining help with housing benefit costs. Those in receipt of supplementary benefit qualified for weekly housing cost additions to their allowances. Under an entirely separate scheme, local authorities gave assistance in the form of rent and rate rebates. It was decided to amalgamate those schemes in a unified benefit system to be administered by local authorities. That system was warmly welcomed in principle by all involved, but in practice, because of the way in which the Government have implemented the scheme, a high price has been paid by those on benefits.
The Government tried to implement the scheme on a nil—cost basis. The scheme has been carried out in a penny-pinching way which guaranteed the scheme's failure before it started. Claimants obtaining benefit under the supplementary benefits scheme still have their housing relief calculated on a basis which is different from the calculation for those who formerly were assisted only by the local authority. Further confusion compounds the problem, because the introduction of a third type of benefit called housing benefit supplement meant inevitably that the scheme became complicated and impossible to work. Illustrations of that confusion have been well documented in the debate. The hon. Member for Oldham, West gave some staggering figures for Hackney. My information is that 70 per cent. of the population in that borough is dependent upon housing benefit and almost 7,000 people have been waiting for more than two months to have their claims sorted out. Meanwhile, arrears continue to pile up. The hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field) alluded to difficulties in his constituency. The hon. Member for Glasgow, Provan (Mr. Brown), with whom I spoke earlier today, said that conditions in Glasgow are no better.
Even before the new scheme was introduced in 1982, fears were expressed that the scheme would go badly wrong if it were not properly financed, organised and implemented. The first phase in November 1982 was implemented relatively smoothly, but, sadly, it became seriously unstuck when substantial changes were introduced in April 1983 with the second phase.
As a measure of the type of complications faced by local authorities, I draw hon. Members' attention to a point made in last week's The Economist, which pointed out that local authorities had to cope with no fewer than nine amendments before the second phase of the scheme was effected in April 1983. The last circular making fairly important changes went out just two weeks before the scheme was expected to be fully operational. No wonder local officials were ill prepared to cope.
One of the weakest remaining links in the chain and which continues to bedevil and dog the new scheme is the fact that local DHSS officers continue certificating claimants' rights for supplementary benefit. Their failure to do that timeously and properly is causing tremendous confusion and anxiety in the areas to which I have adverted.
Initially, we were told that the scheme would cost about £5 million to institute, with an annual running cost


thereafter of about £25 million. My research shows that the latest estimates are that the suggested introductory costs are running at about £8 million, with an annual expense of about £40 million. Admittedly, those costs are supposed to be offset by DHSS staff savings of 2,500 jobs. I should like the Minister of State to confirm those costs. The Liberal-Social Democratic alliance is worried about the cost of administration relative to the benefit savings that we were supposed to be making.
The most cheering aspect of last Monday's statement by the Secretary of State was his decision to set up a committee to review the scheme. I paid careful attention to what he said earlier today, and I look forward to receiving the results of the review. The implementation of the scheme has had a terrible history. I believe that in the autumn, when the review committee reports, the officials will just be beginning to come to grips with the April changes, and we shall have round three of confusion and uncertainty. We should try to avoid that.
I refer briefly to the financial aspects in the statutory instrument. Even the Government would admit that the Secretary of State has been required by the Treasury to save £230 million. I refer the House to the leader in The Times today to which reference has been made. The last sentences state:
the Government should forgo its savings from the scheme. There is enough margin in Mr. Lawson's budget accounting to take the £195 million involved from reserves. That is not too high a price to teach social security tinkerers a lesson.
Social security tinkerers should take note of that point. That is my opinion, and it was the view expressed by the hon. Member for Kemptown.
In view of the totality of the social security budget, these cuts are not worth a candle. The Secretary of State took the strategic decision to find the necessary revenue by cutting funds from housing benefit, and I listened carefully to his explanation. He left it to the Minister of State to carry through the necessary changes. To be fair to the Minister of State, because he took office only in June 1983, it must have been difficult for him to be catapulted into the complicated benefit changes. If I put the most benevolent view on his actions, he must have been in the hands of his parliamentary officials when he agreed to the package of cuts.
I am convinced that neither the Secretary of State nor the Minister of State understood fully the effects of the proposals when they were initially put forward. There is some evidence to suggest that the Cabinet was confused and did not understand the ramifications of the proposals. I quote in evidence of that view the front page story in The Times of Wednesday 23 November 1983:
Cabinet Ministers have complained that they were left in complete ignorance of the political consequences of some of the decisions taken at the November 10 Downing Street meeting on public expenditure targets. It was revealed last night, for example, that Mr. Norman Fowler's £230m package of cuts in housing assistance and rate rebates had been approved by ministers without the benefit of background briefing or detailed cabinet discussion.
I wait to be contradicted about that.
There is evidence that the Government did not understand the full political consequences of the £230 million saving that they set out to achieve. The evidence of the confusion is shown further by the experience of the Association of Metropolitan Authorities, just one of the authorities that complained that it took the Department a month to come up with a comprehensive breakdown of the income levels, weekly losses and the number in each of

those categories losing money because of the original cuts. That suggests a failure by the Government at all levels to understand the implication of the cuts they originally set out to achieve.
Today's debate focuses on the revised proposals outlined by the Secretary of State last Monday after he was forced, as I believe he must concede he has been forced, by political pressure from Conservative Members as well as from the Opposition, and by relentless press exposure in national newspapers such as The Guardian, The Times and others of the deficiencies of the scheme.
Statutory instrument No. 103 covers only the first stage of the cuts that will come into operation on 1 April. They are part of an overall package coming into force in April and November and it is, therefore, right that both parts of the scheme should be considered this evening.
I should like to pay tribute to those Conservative Members who have been so outspoken in their criticism of these proposals. Without their courageous stance—and in particular I single out the hon. Member for Kemptown, who is joint chairman of the all-party group for pensioners and whose devotion and commitment to this cause has impressed me since I became a Member of the House in the summer—we should be unlikely to be debating such a revised proposal.
Pressure from Conservative Members, from the Opposition, from the Social Security Advisory Committee and from newspapers has combined with the painstaking criticism from pressure groups such as Shelter Housing Advisory Committee, Age Concern and the Child Poverty Action Group to force the Government to introduce a review of the housing benefit scheme to exclude those below the needs allowance from the effect of the cuts and to introduce minor modifications of the taper clauses and delay the minimum replacement changes.
The scale of the original measures and the revised version worry me. It is unprecedented in my experience, which may not be great, for regulation changes to be made by secondary legislation. The Social Security Advisory Committee, whose chairman, Sir Arthur Armitage, so tragically died recently, commented in Command 9150 at paragraph 7:
These proposals are undoubtedly the most significant on which we have had to advise in a report on draft regulations. They make changes of a scope more usually dealt with by Parliament through primary legislation".
That is an important point that the House should take into account. We are dealing with substantial sums of money by statutory instrument and secondary legislation. In principle, that must be regretted. I hope that it is not a custom or practice that the Government will continue to adopt during the rest of this Parliament.
The changes in the original proposals can only be described as minimal. The Social Security Advisory Committee's comments are appropriate to the modification that we are considering as well as the original proposal for cuts. The committee also warned:
we have had less time to consider them than their importance merits".
The modifications are being considered with undue haste. The Government would be well advised to take the advice of the hon. Member for Saffron Walden (Mr. Haselhurst), who said it would be sensible to delay the cuts until the review that the Secretary of State has instituted has taken place.
The concessions made by the Secretary of State are reported to restrict the cuts by about £45 million. Even if


that is the case, those concessions have received a more favourable public response then they deserve. Last week, the Secretary of State laid most emphasis on the import of his revised proposals in April 1984. He sought to convince his Conservative colleagues that he had backtracked a long way when in fact he had merely hidden in the scheme's tangled undergrowth.
The Secretary of State's reply in Command 9155 to the Social Security Advisory Committee lays the Secretary of State's generosity bare for all to see. We know that the effects of his previous proposal would have been to cut the housing benefit of the average occupational pensioner by 80p a week. The effect of the Secretary of State's modified proposals, as conceded in paragraph 9 of his reply to the Social Security Advisory Committee, would be to cut the average occupational pensioner's housing benefit by 73p a week from November. The average pensioner will have been spared to the extent of 7p a week. I have caused some research to be carried out, and I am told that that sum can purchase half a bar of Kit Kat.

Mr. Foulkes: More than a tin of Kit-e-Kat.

Mr. Kirkwood: More than a tin of Kit-e-kat, as the hon. Member for Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley (Mr. Pounces) says.
I am grateful for the additional information given to the House by the hon. Member for Kemptown about the answer that he has received to a parliamentary question relating to how many pensioners will lose sums of money in April 1984. We have not heard yet, and we await with keen interest to hear what the Government spokesman can tell us, about the losses to be sustained in November.
The proposals before us tonight—the raising of the tapers and the changes in the non-dependant deductions, in particular— are merely the first bite. They will hit about 1 million pensioners who will lose benefit in two stages. The first will be in April and the second in November when the minima level changes, the high rent threshold changes and the 16 to 17-year-old non-dependant deductions come in.
Many thousands of pensioners will lose more than £1 a week and some will lose up to £3 a week. Families on low incomes will lose out and the poverty trap will be accentuated. Council tenants also will be severely hit. Until the Government produce figures to the contrary—which they have so far failed to do—there is no good reason for us to assume anything other than that the revised proposals will have only a marginally different effect on those involved compared with the previous ones. The new proposals will not have as stiff a cumulative effect on some individuals, but we are, none the less, talking about substantial numbers of people — about 2 million households that stand to lose as a result of the cuts.
The original idea of housing benefit cuts has been widely and rightly condemned. A Government who are prepared to raise mortgage relief thresholds and to continue to pay mortgage interest relief—here I agree with the arguments deployed by the hon. Member for Oldham, West as far as they went—at higher bands of income tax while cutting the benefit of some of the poorest families are, in my view, promoting a socially divisive two-nations policy. They cannot claim to be governing in the interests of all our people when they reward the rich by cutting benefits for the poor. The Government cannot

attribute blame to the poor for their own condition. Many of them are dependent upon housing benefit because of the direct and indirect consequences of the Government's financial and economic policies. During the past five years, unemployment has soared, the gap between rich and poor has increased, and other basic costs have been forced up, to the severe prejudice of people on small and fixed incomes.
Even in the event of the Secretary of State securing the parliamentary approval that he needs to implement the regulations, the callousness and incompetence of the scheme will continue to dog him and the Government for the rest of this Parliament and perhaps beyond.
We on these Benches will make it our business, when we get into a position of any influence in the Government, to introduce a thorough overhaul of the system that conjoins taxation and benefit schemes so that we can sweep away the anomalies and discrepancies in the system that we are debating and introduce a proper tax credit system.

7 pm

Mr. Alistair Burt,: In the general election of June last year I was returned to Parliament for a constituency which had previously been in the temporary stewardship of a Labour Member but which was a traditionally Conservative area. It was not traditionally Conservative in the sense of those who equate the Conservative with the landlord of vast rolling shires and an abundance of green countryside. There are many different sorts of Conservative, and the Conservatives of Bury and the surrounding area were—and still are — hard-working, thrifty, careful individuals. They do not have too much money to spread about, but they have an understanding of the basic values and concerns of life and are sufficiently acute to be aware that the ways of the world are almost inevitably Tory. In a close-knit community, concern for one's neighbour was nothing new and nothing to be remarked upon.
In recent years times have got harder for my constituency. Unemployment has risen, for many reasons. The people of Bury, North had sufficient confidence in the Conservative Government, and sufficient astuteness, not to be taken in by Labour promises of jam tomorrow, to see the problems of the wider world and to appreciate that Bury's difficulties could not be laid at the door of one particular Government. Times and money were tight, but my constituents were prepared to return a Conservative Member. It is because of that strand of Conservative thought, that feeling of closeness and concern for others, and the feeling that today a little money means a great deal to a growing number of people in my constituency, that I am making this speech.
It is not easy to find many good words to say about the system of housing benefit. A calculated gamble was taken by the Government some time ago to seek a unified housing benefit system to the mutual advantage of those who claim benefit and those who dispense it. That attempt is not to be sneered at.
If we are to tackle the problem of welfare benefit spending in this country, foresight will be needed. The will to try something different will also be needed and should be encouraged. Those who argue for the protection of all the sacred cows in the social security system ignore the


evidence of their own eyes by ignoring the problems of increasing demand and vastly rising expenditure. I do not seek to do that.
All my hon. Friends accept the problems discussed by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and acknowledge the general thrust of Government financial policy. In passing, I associate myself entirely with the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Mr. Bowden) about the work and quality of the ministerial team and the way in which benefits are generally administered.
Much is said by Opposition Members about their care for the old. I spend a little of my time here working on energy matters, partly because of my constituents' concern about fuel and high prices. Fuel—like housing—is a matter of great concern to the elderly. A small statistic recently revealed that the Labour Government increased electricity prices by 170 per cent. —2 per cent. every five weeks. Under this Conservative Government, who are proposing a 2 per cent. increase over a period of two years, heating additions have outstripped fuel prices. That suggests how the present Government care for the old and perhaps redresses the balance of the remarks made by the hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Meacher). It is precisely because our record of care for the old has been so good and reasonable that I find the measures before us so sad.
I return to the problem of the benefit and my right hon. Friend's difficulty in trying to deal with the anomalies that he described. If a job is to be done properly, a target must be not only sighted but accurately and cleanly hit. I accept what my right hon. Friend said about the increasing expenditure on housing benefit and the fact that in many cases it goes to those who do not need it. However, although the general area of the target has been correctly identified, I do not believe that the bull's eye has been hit.
The whole system has proved extremely difficult to administer. Studies throughout the country — in particular, by the citizens advice bureaux—note that although the chaos of the initial introduction—not really unexpected—has now lessened, there are still areas of the country where benefit cannot be provided within, at best, 14 days of the claim. In a number of cases, payments are made much later. My own authority, which has done its best with the scheme, recently reported to me:
The goal of simplification, making the scheme easier for claimants to understand and for officials to administer, has really not been achieved.
It will perhaps for ever be impossible to estimate the losses in administrative time which have occurred because of the hurried nature of the changeover. The figure of £230 million demanded by the Treasury initially as a saving from the budget of the Department of Health and Social Security for these schemes will be seen as small beer when compared with what might have been lost administratively. It may be impossible to make the calculation. One can certainly say, however, that, whatever were the hopes of the scheme in the beginning, they have not been satisfied.
The review announced last week, and referred to today by my right hon. Friend, must be welcomed on all sides. It will surely provide the proper opportunity to spot the high income anomaly and to seek real savings both now and in future in the housing benefit scheme. One would hope that, if the Government seek to be a truly reforming Administration, other Departments will take a lesson from

the DHSS, consider other aspects of national and local government, and come to similar conclusions that overhaul may be necessary. Let us see what true reforms can be brought instead of tinkering and continuing to chop and change in an unsatisfactory manner, pleasing few and upsetting many. Fundamental reform of local government finance might be a potential target.
The review is much to be welcomed, and I shall await with eagerness its terms of reference. The inquiry should certainly possess an outside element — preferably through the appointment of an independent chairman and the access of outside bodies to it so that their recommendations may be considered. The greater the number of bodies with influence on the inquiry, the better will be the chance of finding the right answer. The inquiry should be wide-ranging enough to cover not just the machinery and administration of the present system of housing benefits but the possibility of a reformation of the system, should that be necessary. If it is open enough to accept innovations, great strides may be made. I am pleased to note what my right hon. Friend said in response to the leading article in The Times today.
The Government's concessions show that they accept that all is not well. If the Government listen to those who have pinpointed examples of where the present loss of benefit will strike and are disturbed by those examples, and if they accept the need for a fundamental review of the whole system — as they do — why are we discussing these measures? Tinkering with the system has produced the worst of both worlds. A considerable number of people have been alienated, and the Treasury has benefited by only a comparatively small sum.
If the Government had announced the review and said that they would act upon its recommendations, they would not only have had the full support of all hon. Members on the Government Benches but might have been able well and truly to pinpoint their targets and reduce benefits to those who do not need them in order to concentrate resources on the poor, which is the aim of us all.
Much has been said about the concessions, and a suggestion has been made that they tend merely to defer loss of benefit. I sincerely appreciate what my right hon. Friend and his colleagues have been able to achieve on behalf of those who expressed such concern about the original proposals. If we accept that cuts have to be made and put ourselves in the Minister's shoes, we can accept that it should be housing benefit that suffers rather than anything else. That may still be the case. I do not suggest that no cuts in housing benefit need to be made, but the cuts announced are not falling in the right place. With the Budget shortly upon us, we should be asking not which benefit must be cut but whether there should be a cut at this stage at all.
My hon. Friend the Member for Saffron Walden (Mr. Haselhurst) mentioned the economic position. At the time of the autumn statement the gloom over public expenditure was acute, but, if we read the entrails of the financial newspapers correctly, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor may have rather more room than he originally expected when he makes his Budget statement in four weeks' time. There has been economic growth since the autumn. A recent survey by the Confederation of British Industry suggests that the recovery is rather more substantial than it seemed at first. Is there not an opportunity for the Chancellor to absorb this mish-mash of benefit loss with all its imperfections into the Budget picture, not so that it


might be lost for ever but so that something proper and sensible can be worked out during the review in the summer? He might gain rather more at the end than he stands to lose at the moment.
I must say in all honesty that I find little enthusiasm throughout my constituency for the possibility of cuts in personal taxation if it is suspected that they are to be financed by less fortunate folk down the road. There might be parts of the United Kingdom where such a view is acceptable, but I do not represent one.
Right hon. and hon. Members have already drawn attention to the individual impact of the benefit regulations, and I shall not go into detail about that. Experience in our surgeries week by week teaches us the value of small sums of money to people whose needs are great and incomes small. It cannot be right that poorer pensioners, who are not too much above supplementary benefit level, should have to withstand losses to the extent, in many cases, of £1 a week and, in other cases, more. It cannot be right to put forward proposals which have a tendency to entice more people into rather than release more people from the poverty trap. It cannot be right to run the risk that a non-dependant who has lost a job will have to wait 56 days until the household's housing benefit has been readjusted, and that during that time he or she will have to pay up to £8·50 a week into the housing budget. Even the Social Security Advisory Committee has suggested that that delay "should preferably be abolished."
I must emphasise my special anxiety about small amounts of money meaning a lot to people on small incomes. It is easy for someone on a higher income to tide himself over a bad time for a few weeks, or sometimes even months; but, for people on a limited budget, a holdover of benefit, even for a couple of weeks, might cause real hardship. If it merely sends a family across the road to a DHSS office to get an urgent needs payment, nothing has been gained. Indeed, something has been lost.
We do not know what the effects of a cumulative loss of benefit will be. It is possible to make up theoretical examples of losses of benefit which lead to cumulative losses, which not uncommonly amount to £8 per week. Of course, I welcome and accept what my right hon. Friend said about having a limit on the amount of loss to be suffered in any one instance. However, while the limit is being agreed and considered by my right hon. Friend and local authorities, there is great uncertainty throughout the country — uncertainty that could be avoided if the regulations were not put into effect before his announced review has been completed and the limit has been set.
The measures advanced by the Government fail on several counts. They will do nothing to ease the difficulties of administration; they will do little to prevent the overrunning of the housing benefit scheme; they will not be able to take reductions from those who can stand them best without hurting those who can stand them least; they will do little to affect the Chancellor's public sector borrowing requirement; and yet the distress that they might cause is out of all proportion to the saving and the benefits to the country. In short, the measures are unnecessary, unfortunate and unacceptable.
The Conservative party and Government have for years survived the jibes of many of those who believe that we do not care enough for the poor and for those whose circumstances are unfortunate. Opposition Members have

little of which to be proud in this respect. They often wear their hearts on their sleeves in opposition, but they make sure that they hide their wallets and the banknotes under the mattress when they take power. Alas, a measure such as this makes it more difficult for the Conservative party to maintain its standing throughout the country. The Government must be careful. They must not strain the patience of their supporters in the country who think a great deal of them, understand and accept the basic need to control public expenditure and are prepared to cooperate and work hard for comprehensive reform. Many people wish to ensure that the ideal of the concentration of resources on those who need them the most does not get blown away in a benefit free-for-all or through measures such as this where the target is good but the aim is bad.
The Government have much to do that is right and supportable. The more their actions are based on our firm, unforgettable and not forgotten compassionate tradition, the greater our support will grow. We might do well to pause and wonder at the slight feeling throughout the country of unease about the Government. Some of my colleagues might support these measures with a heavy heart tonight. It is with great reluctance, and with an equally heavy heart, that I shall not be joining them.

Mr. George Foulkes: It is a special pleasure to speak after the hon. Member for Bury, North (Mr. Burt) after what he said at the end of his speech. I did not agree with many of his more party political points but he would not expect me to do so. However, when dealing with the issue before us he made a telling, if not devastating, case which was no less effective for being presented quietly and thoughtfully. I listened carefully to the hon. Gentleman's speech. I hope that the Secretary of State was not just hearing what he said but listened to it carefully, because his hon. Friend made a powerful case.
What the hon. Member for Bury, North said has already been touched on by several hon. Members on both sides of the House. They have repeatedly said that the Government are rushing into proposals the effect of which on individuals they do not know. It is criminally irresponsible for them to proceed without knowing how much the proposals will affect old people, couples in poverty and young people.
Several hon. Members on both sides of the House have pointed out that the Government's proposals will cause more administrative chaos in local authorities. They will have to cope with yet more changes. When we get the review, there will be changes again. The House has made a clarion call to the Government not to implement the proposals now. The Government recently announced that they would set up a review. Hon. Members on both sides of the House are now saying, "Is it not crazy, having set up a review, and having acknowledged that the system is not working but needs a fundamental review, to go ahead with all of this tinkering, not knowing how it will affect people?" I was glad to hear the hon. Member for Bury, North say that he would not vote with the Government tonight. I was also glad to hear that he will follow up his good words with deeds and vote against the Government.

Mr. Burt: I must correct the hon. Gentleman. Although I shall not support my party, I cannot bring myself to associate with the Opposition, whose record is rather less outstanding than their deeds.

Mr. Foulkes: In that case, I must reluctantly withdraw my congratulations. I thought that the hon. Gentleman had the necessary courage. He described how his constituents were suffering. He said how much a small amount of money meant to people who were living in poverty. He described how the Government were taking money away from them. If he really believes that and wants to represent the people whom he purports to represent, he should have the courage to be with us in the Lobby tonight.
We see such behaviour again and again. I do not know what causes it, or what time warp occurs between Bury and Westminster or other parts of the United Kingdom and Westminster. Some right hon. and hon. Members must have constituents rather like mine unless, of course, they represent stockbroker belts. I know that the hon. Member for Derbyshire, South (Mrs. Currie) and others have far more stockbrokers than poor people in their constituencies.

Mrs. Currie: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that the best-off people in my constituency are the coal miners?

Mr. Foulkes: That is a dramatic revelation, on which I shall ponder all evening.
Ordinary people come to the surgeries of Conservative Members, who must gain some understanding, unless they have no feeling at all—I do not impute that to them—of the problems that the Government are creating. I cannot understand why Conservative Back Benchers are so lily-livered that they do not translate their words into deeds. The rebellions that we have seen so far have been puny and pathetic. All the time we get bleeding hearts, sympathy and supposed understanding, but never any action.
That was just my introduction following the speech of the hon. Member for Bury, North and I shall now come to what I had planned to say.
I was amazed at the criticisms of the Opposition Front Bench by my good friend—I cannot say my hon. Friend—the joint chairman of the all-party pensioners group, the hon. Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Mr. Bowden), and others, including the hon. Member for Roxburgh and Berwickshire (Mr. Kirkwood). My hon. Friend the Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Meacher) was criticised for being too aggressive, for using hyperbole, and for other alleged failings. Considering what we have before us tonight, I thought that my hon. Friend was far too gentlemanly.
The regulations are among the most outrageous and unjustifiable to come from a Government famous for their outrageous and unjustifiable proposals. Even a leader in The Times today described the measure as a "smash and grab raid". We shall probably hear more quotations from The Times leader column tonight. Thankfully the paper is being published this week, which is advantageous.
Now that the Minister for Social Security is back in the Chamber, I have a question for him. The hon. Gentleman will need to speak even more rapidly than usual to be able to cover all the points, but it will not take him long to list the organisations that support the Government's proposals. I cannot find any. If Conservative Members want to intervene, I shall give way. The hon. Member for Derbyshire, South can do her ritual crawling later in the debate, if she wishes, but I can find no one outside the House who supports the measure and few inside, apart from the hon. Lady.
Three Conservative Members have spoken so far, all of whom were critical of what the Government are

proposing. The Secretary of State asked us to consider the regulations in relation to the Government's three interconnected aims, which are to control the allegedly high level of public spending, as well as inflation and taxation.
I shall not take the Brian Walden line and argue that the Government have failed to control taxation or high public spending. Let us accept that the Government are sincere in their objectives, but the people with the broadest shoulders, those best able to contribute and make sacrifices for the Government's aims, will not be affected by housing benefit. To repeat the question of the hon. Member for Kemptown, has anyone listed the ways in which elderly people have shouldered more than their fair share of the burden to keep the country on an even economic keel over the past five years?
The Labour Government introduced a link between pensions and earnings. We said that pensions would go up in line with either prices or earnings, whichever was the higher, but that scheme was scrapped by the Conservative Government. The hon. Member for Kemptown said that benefits had been going up in line with inflation I am afraid that he forgot to mention quite a few benefits, for example the one on which both he and I have been campaigning for the past five years—the death grant. He forgot the Christmas bonus, which should now he well over £40 to keep up with inflation. The Government also scrapped the proposal for a national concessionary travel scheme. Conservative Members have done nothing about domestic energy standing charges, which have rocketed under the present Government. What about the sheltered housing programme? Every hon. Member will agree that to provide purpose-built sheltered housing for the elderly is one of the best things that we could do for them, yet the programme has been slashed by the Government.
The reason why my voice is not as good as normal is that on Sunday and Monday this week I was in Dumfries and Ayrshire with the Labour party NHS ambulance, as part of the campaign against the cuts in the NHS. I said to the people of Dumfries and Ayrshire that the lists of geriatrics and old people waiting for geriatric and psychogeriatric care had greatly increased because of the NHS cuts. The cuts in local authority expenditure mean that there have been cuts in home help provision and in meals-on-wheels for old people. Those burdens are already being borne by our old people.
The Government say that we should suggest an alternative. I could go on for another half hour, suggesting alternatives. The mortgage interest relief scheme has been cited already as a criminal additional expenditure for those who are already particularly well off when we are cutting back on housing benefit. I shall mention some more alternatives. There are 1,800 people on islands 8,000 miles away on whom we are spending not just a few pence. a few pounds, a few hundred pounds or a few thousand pounds, but millions of pounds in trying to maintain them. That is in the Falkland Islands. We could relatively easily come to a peaceful arrangement in the south Atlantic that would cut down that expenditure.
There are a number of rich people who can afford to pay tax and companies that have set up subsidiaries or holding companies in the tax havens of the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man. Hundreds, if not thousands, of millions of pounds of tax are being lost in that way. Why do the Government not do something about that instead of clobbering people through the housing benefit scheme?


There is also the tax relief for BUPA and for private schools. I could go on giving a list of ways in which the Government are helping the rich.
As the hon. Member for Kemptown said, the amount to be taken from pensioners is £45 million compared with the Department of Health and Social Security budget of £37 billion. Unlike the hon. Member for Kemptown, I believe that if the accountant said that he had lost £45 million I would have him on the carpet, but if the spending officer said that he had overspent by £45 million I would not argue the case at all, because £45 million in £37 billion is much less than the margin of error. As The Times said in the great leader today,
There is enough margin in Mr. Lawson's budget accounting to take the £195 million involved from reserves.
Of course there is. We know that there is such a slack in any Budget, but the Government are not prepared to do that. They used the reserves on the Falklands episode. They managed to find the money for that, but they cannot find the money for our old people.
It is not as if the present cuts, particularly in housing benefits and the adverse effects on old people, are new. Even when housing benefits were introduced, many people suffered more than they did previously. A note from my former colleagues in Age Concern Scotland stated:
Already 17,000 Scottish pensioners"—
these are the Scottish figures—
have been 'floated off' supplementary benefit when housing benefit was introduced. All of these households lost entitlement to allowances for heating, payment of their water rates, entitlement to single payments for necessities and entitlement to use the fuel direct payments scheme.
Those pensioners lost out the first time when housing benefits were introduced. Age Concern Scotland gives examples of people who are affected, which I shall not quote because I have already spoken at fair length and I have other points to make. No doubt other voluntary organisations can give examples of people who have been affected.
Let me underline what a number of other hon. Members have said. We are talking about pensioners who have tried to take advantage of what the Government have said is an incentive to work and to provide for themselves in retirement. They are the very people whom Conservative Members purport to want to encourage. Age Concern Scotland says:
In particular we should point out that some pensioners will be paid an enhanced pension through the state earned related scheme, and will be penalised by the state for this through the housing benefit scheme.
That is crazy.
The hon. Member for Roxburgh and Berwickshire quoted the figures in the April changes. The Government are paying a lot of attention to the alleged concessions in April. The Secretary of State concentrated on those during his speech and no doubt the Minister will do the same when he replies. However, when one also takes account of what will happen in November, we realise that taking April and November together there are really no concessions at all. They are illusory. At the end of the day, as Age Concern and others have pointed out, the average gain to a pensioner as a result of the concessions in April is 9p per week. Is it not amazing that well over 40 Conservative Members who said that they were annoyed

and furious and would fight against the Government's proposals have been bought off by what the hon. Member for Roxburgh and Berwickshire described as half a Kit-Kat? That is the price of Conservative Members' consciences.
As usual, the Government's favourite targets are those who are suffering most. As a number of people have said in representations to us, the analysis clearly shows—it is not easy to analyse the Government's proposals—that the burden of the cuts will fall particularly on council house tenants who have suffered more than anyone else in the past five years of Conservative government. It is all right for those who have private houses and mortgages. We have done relatively well. However, council house tenants have seen their rents go up far in excess of inflation. At the same time, because of cuts in public expenditure, local authorities have not been able to maintain the houses to the standards to which they should be maintained. Many local authority houses are not now as wind and watertight as it is the landlord's responsibility to make them. Council house tenants are being clobbered again.
I have spoken of the United Kingdom in a general context, and I hope that hon. Members will forgive me if I mention Scotland briefly. Unfortunately, in his answer to a written question, the Minister was unable to say exactly how many people in Scotland are affected. I have received a helpful briefing from Shelter in Scotland. The Secretary of State was a little dismissive about SHAC earlier, but I hope that he will find Shelter's figures rather more convincing. It says:
Scotland is particularly vulnerable to any cuts in housing benefit. According to the latest figures, 35·7 per cent. of British households receive housing benefit, but for Scotland alone the figure is 45 per cent. or 812,000 households. Moreover it is certain that the brunt of the proposed cuts will be borne by claimants of standard housing benefit, of which there are 531,000 households, a figure which, proportionately, is no less than 56 per cent. higher than the counterpart for England and Wales".
What the Department of Health and Social Security is doing to housing benefit will have a much harsher effect on the constituents of my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Cathcart (Mr. Maxton) and my own than it will on the constituents of Conservative Members who, as we know, predominantly represent constituencies south of the border.
Finally, I want to quote from a report produced by one of the most respected people in social services in the United Kingdom today. Mr. Fred Edwards is the director of social work on Strathclyde regional council. Strathclyde regional council has the largest social services department, not just in Britain but in Europe, and Fred Edwards and his staff have a great deal of experience in dealing with the problems. In the conclusion of his report he says:
I hope that the Government will abandon the proposed cuts entirely".
Those are the words of a local authority official and there are no politics involved.
He goes on to say:
As a minimum there will be serious social repercussions in Strathclyde if the following changes are not introduced.
(1) A 'safety net' should be introduced which would ensure that the cumulative effect of the various proposed cuts are limited for any individual family.
That is not included. Secondly, he says:
Proposals to increase deductions from rebates for nondependent 16-20 year olds should be withdrawn; these proposals, if implemented, will lead to a reduction of the income of young


people including disabled teenagers, and will increase rent arrears problems and lead to considerable stress in low income families.
That is the view of a respected social work director. That is what will happen in Strathclyde. That is what will happen to families who are already under stress. It will create problems for social workers who are already overworked. That is what the Government are doing by not accepting either of the requirements put forward by Fred Edwards.
Fred Edwards goes on to say:
I also consider that in the event of the proposed changes being implemented in full or in part,"—
he is a realist, because he knows that although some Conservative Members say that they will go through the Lobby with a heavy heart they will go none the less—
the DHSS should run a national advertising campaign"—
is the Minister planning a national advertising campaign along the lines suggested by Fred Edwards?—
explaining the changes being introduced by the Government and their implications, and explaining that Local Authorities have no discretion in their implementation.
In other words, it should explain that it is the Government who are responsible.
At the end of the day, Fred Edwards, all those who made representations to the advisory committee, and all those hon. Members who have spoken tonight, apart from the Minister, have said that the Government should think again, for the sake of all those who will suffer—the Minister and others have admitted that we do not know all those who will be affected—and for the sake of all the local authorities which will have more and more work implementing the changes and, no doubt, further changes. Having set up an inquiry to consider the operation of housing benefits and to institute some kind of fundamental review, is not it crazy to go ahead with these tinkering proposals which will affect so many people? I finish by echoing what every hon. Member has said tonight. I hope that the Government will think again.

Mrs. Edwina Currie: This is a debate about generosity. One of Britain's institutions, of which we are rightly proud and which distinguishes it from most other countries, including those behind the iron curtain, is the welfare state. We have one of the most generous in the world, and among all the benefits the housing benefits scheme is acknowledged to be the most generous of all. Indeed, the Social Security Advisory Committee said that the housing benefit scheme as presently constituted reaches further up the ladder of increasing family income than any other scheme that we have.
In the past 10 years, cash expenditure on rents and rebates—the standard benefits—has gone up 10 times over. It is worth remembering that when the scheme started in 1972–73 we were talking about £132 million. Now it is £1,330 million. Even taking into account inflation, that is an increase in real terms of about 140 per cent. We are talking about a total cost of £4 billion out of a total social security budget of £37 billion. That is 30 per cent. of total public expenditure, and the figures that we have this year are £1 billion more than the figures set out in the public expenditure White Paper. That is generosity on a very large scale. To my mind, it is a definition of largesse.

Mr. Geoffrey Lofthouse: rose—

Mrs. Currie: I shall give way in a moment.
We should also remember that among those who receive that generosity are a. very large number of people who are helping to pay for it through the tax system.

Mr. Lofthouse: The hon. Lady gave figures for the increase in housing benefts. Does she accept that unemployment has gone from 1 million to 4 million?

Mrs. Currie: The main increases that concern me are not the number of people claiming benefit for that reason but the number claiming benefit, and who are able so to do, because the scheme has got progressively more generous. I shall describe in a moment one or two of the ways in which that has happened.
In 1982, 60 per cent. of the people receiving housing benefit were taxpayers as well. I followed with interest the comments of the hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Meacher) on the subject of higher taxpayers. I gather that about 600,000 of those who pay tax and claim benefit were actually higher tax rate claimants. I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman's criticism and dislike of people who pay higher tax would extend to those who also manage to claim housing benefit. I do not believe they should claim housing benefit. The hon. Gentleman does not believe that they should claim mortgage tax relief. Perhaps we should put the thing together and say that it would be much better if they did not pay the higher rate of tax either.
The whole system was designed as a safety net. It has not been a safety net. It has become a great big smothering blanket. In my view, having had experience of administering one of these systems, it has become what it was never intended to be—the biggest feather bed in, the world. Whoever was in charge, whichever party was occupying the Government Front Bench, someone would have to take the system in hand and sort it out. A system as generous as that ends up by destroying the independence and strength of the country and doing none of the things it was designed to do.
I want to pick up one or two of the points that were made in the debate. There was a discussion earlier about mortgage tax relief. It is worth putting on record that when the Labour party was in power it did not touch mortgage tax relief. The Labour Government did not put it up, which they should have done to keep up with inflation, and they did not put it down. They did not alter it at all. Labour Members were aware then, as they are now, that a large number of people, many of whom are not well off, claim mortgage tax relief. If, as I have a feeling it may, it becomes Labour policy in the next Labour party manifesto to abolish mortgage tax relief, that party will lose the next election as it lost the last two elections. The policy will be writ large for a large number of the electorate. There is not a chance in hell that the Labour party will mess around with mortgage tax relief, and to criticise the Government for keeping it up with inflation is a piece of horrifying hypocrisy.
I want to put on record that, in this debate on a matter that affects millions of our people, this is the second time in approximately four weeks that I have had to point out that no more than seven or eight Labour Members have been present. I exclude the hon. Member for Ross, Cromarty and Skye (Mr. Kennedy), who represents the alliance and has been here all the time. At one stage the


number was down to four Members. I counted five, but the fifth Member was the Government Whip, who was sitting on the Labour Benches, trying to encourage them and saying that all the fire and brimstone that we had heard was a little hollow when about 190 Labour Members were out having their tea.
The hon. Member for Oldham, West should beware. If he is going to act like a great general leading an army in a morale crusade, he needs to make sure that he has his troops behind him. Otherwise, he will end up being dubbed the Commander Bill Boakes of the Labour party, and the half a dozen votes that he will collect as a result will be an accurate reflection of the real interest of Labour Members.

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Harold Walker): Order. I hope that the hon. Lady will come to the regulations that are before the House. She has been speaking for six minutes, and so far she has not mentioned them.

Mrs. Currie: It will be a great pleasure so to do.
One of the most useful things that has come out of our debate today, and on 6 February when we originally debated this subject, is the review that the Secretary of State intends to introduce. That review could do a number of things, and I hope that it will be in order if I suggest a few.
One of the most important, in my opinion, is liaison with other Departments, particularly the Department of the Environment. I had the experience, as hon. Members will know, of instituting the housing benefit scheme in Birmingham. It was obvious — I am sure it was not intended—that the Department of the Environment and the DHSS never actually talked to each other about how the housing benefit scheme should operate. Birmingham is a good illustration, because the total housing revenue account—the rent roll—was about £100 million. We started off in early 1982 with a housing subsidy of about £15 million. We also had a subsidy from rates of about £15 million. We finished the end of the year with a subsidy from rates of about £2 million—much of which was the statutory contribution and could not be avoided. So we were able to get rid of a very large chunk of money.
One of the ways in which we did that was, with Government encouragement, to put up rents. The hon. Member for Oldham, West will be surprised to hear that I think he is right about rents. We were able to put up the rents to an economic level in the city. I took the view that Conservatives should do that and should then subsidise those who could not pay. At the same time as paying an economic rent, those people were entitled to housing repairs, good estate management, wardens, and so on. Labour Members could not fault me on those aspects of our policy. For example, we did 26 per cent. more repairs in that year with the rent money that we raised.
The effect was interesting. Early in 1982, approximately 50 per cent. of Birmingham's council tenants were receiving some form of benefit. About half were on supplementary benefit, and half were on rent and rate relief. By early 1983—certainly during 1983—the figure rose substantially. Now about 70 per cent. of those tenants are on benefit of one kind or another. That is not an uncommon experience in the country as a whole. In most cities now between 60 per cent. and 70 per cent. of council tenants receive benefit of one kind or another.
What we did was to switch the subsidy from the Department of the Environment to the Department of Health and Social Security. We, at least, knew exactly what we were doing, but I sometimes wonder whether in the sums done on a national level it was realised that not only Birmingham or Sheffield but every local authority in the country was doing it.
The result was that the poor old DHSS has picked up the tab in local authorities in no uncertain terms. In fact, that has been encouraged. Some local authorities have managed to make a profit out of their housing revenue accounts, and in a small non-metropolitan district council that is easy to do. The housing benefit system will also pick up an increase in rates, if that is what one wants. In fact, it is more generous in the treatment of rates than in the treatment of rents. I do not believe that it was anyone's intention to encourage the switch to housing benefit for those reasons and in that way, but that is what happened. In my view, therefore, the housing benefit scheme has been treated by many local authorities, entirely in the interests of their rent and rate payers, like a great big American Express card. As the bills came in, the recipients were able to say—and it is entirely in their interests for them to do so — "Rent increase? Rate increase? Housing benefit? That will do nicely."
We see the result. One of the reasons was the general slippage of the high-rent areas. When the scheme started, a local authority had to show that rents were 150 per cent. above the national level to qualify as a high-rent area. Now the figures are 120 per cent. for council rents and 115 per cent. for private rents. Those must change. They are not reasonable figures and they open too many doors.
The review board should also examine the statistical base on which most of the information is compiled. I was for a short time a civil servant and, therefore, I retain the faint hope that civil servants will normally provide the answers if the questions are asked in the right way. The Social Security Advisory Committee report, commenting on the changes, in page 4, paragraph 4, says:
Some information we should have liked in considering these important changes was not, however, available because of limitations in the Department's data base. We regret in particular that no information was obtainable on the size of benefit losses and numbers of families affected simultaneously by several of the five major changes proposed in these regulations. Details could be provided of the numbers affected by each change individually, and of numbers of families by size of loss for the changes proposed in the tapers and the level of minimum payments. But no figures were available for overall losses. We find it unsatisfactory that information should not exist on the size of benefit losses likely to be suffered by significant groups of people, and, more importantly, that"—
the rest of the quotation is in italics—
there is thus no provision in these regulations for limiting the total loss to any one beneficiary.
That is astonishing. It did not take the pressure groups long to work out the overall effect on any one family of more than one of the five different changes. If it did not take the pressure groups long, one must seriously ask why the DHSS said that it could not be done.
The inadequacies of the data base have resulted in the problem we find now. The Secretary of State has asked for £190 million to be found and it has affected 2·5 million households to the tune of less than £1 each. Surely that is not the way we would normally expect a small change like that, which is peanuts in terms of the overall £4 billion, to be taken over so many households. It is probably the data base itself that is at fault.
In his response, in paragraph 25, the Secretary of State said that basically he agreed but that it all depended on the family expenditure survey. If the family expenditure survey will not answer the questions that are put to it, it is about time it was put right.
Whatever we did with this leviathan, this monster of a system, this great thing that has grown without anyone realising how it would grow, whatever changes were, will be or may be introduced by whoever sits on the Front Bench, somebody would not like it. With better consultation with other Departments and with a better data base, at least we might say that we had got the system that we intended to end up with.
The hon. Member for Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley (Mr. Foulkes) talked about bleeding hearts. It has long been an axiom of anyone who has administered major spending budgets in welfare areas that it is no good having a bleeding heart if it cannot be paid for. I detect a deep unwillingness among many ordinary people to pay out more in tax, and I detect a deep inability in industry and commerce to find any more. In this debate no one has mentioned the poor so-and-so's who have to pay. For £4 billion to be taken out our system in transfer payments is an enormous burden to put on the economy.
We should ask ourselves whether it would not be better if some of that money were back in the pockets of those who pay it and in the hands of industry. I would rather see that money spent creating employment and future prosperity instead of perpetuating the pattern of dependence to which we seem to have become addicted.

Mr. Jeff Rooker: It is not without significance that since the Secretary of State sat down the hon. Lady the Member for Derbyshire, South (Mrs. Currie) is only the second person who has taken part in the debate who will vote for the regulations. I have not kept a count of how many speakers there have been, but I think it is nine, ten or eleven. Clearly the hon. Lady is a supporter of the Government, and good luck to her.

Mr. Lofthouse: She will need it.

Mr. Rooker: Well, she will pay the price in the end.
Hon. Members on both sides of the House who have spoken are grateful to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and to your predecessor in the Chair for not confining the debate to the pure technicalities of the measures. I do not think that even the Ministers would have wanted that, because the ramifications are wider. I want to comment first on what has been said and then make some constituency points.
Some hon. Members talk about people in receipt of housing benefit and supplementary benefit and about taxpayers as though they were in different groups, whereas, generally speaking, they are the same people. I do not know how many recipients of housing benefit pay tax. The hon. Lady quoted a figure, but I think she was talking about those on higher rates of tax. Many people who are in receipt of one or other of the social security benefits, of which housing benefit is one, pay income tax.
Because of tax and national insurance changes in the past five years since the Government came to power, people who are working full time but whose earnings are in the bottom tenth of the earnings scale are worse off in real terms than they were five years ago. Anyone on the

bottom tenth of the earnings scale, unless living in a mansion, will be eligible for housing benefit. In real terms, before housing cost is taken into account, they are worse off because of the tax changes made by the Government. We must get rid of the smear that appeared to come from Conservative Members that families with an income of £200 a week should not be getting help. I am not talking about those people.
The hon. Member for Bury, North (Mr. Burt) spoiled a speech with which I and most of my hon. Friends could agree by indicating that he intends to abstain when the vote is taken. As he knows in his heart, he must go back to Bury and explain to at least 3,000 of his constituents why their housing benefit will be cut. That is his dilemma. Unfortunately, there is at the moment no Member for Chesterfield. Someone must explain why 3,000 families in Chesterfield will have their housing benefit cut. The hon. Member for Derbyshire, South has the same responsibility to the 3,000 of her constituents who will lose housing benefit because of the changes we are debating today.
Reference has been made to the tax relief on mortgages. There is not a shred of evidence to show that my party will make any change to mortgage tax relief, as the hon. Member for Derbyshire, South well knows, as she grins like a Cheshire cat. That suggestion is typical of the Tory smear. What we will do—and there is a strong rumour that the Chancellor may do so in the Budget—is to get rid of the extra mortgage tax relief for higher rate taxpayers who have a taxable income of over, I think, £14,500. They are on more than £300 per week before they start to pay the higher rate of tax. They receive an extra plus on mortgage tax relief. There is a strong rumour that the Chancellor of the Exchequer intends to do that. If he does, he will receive 100 per cent. support from the Opposition. The question is whether the Chancellor will receive 100 per cent. support from his own side.
Such action would amount to social justice and would go some way towards redressing the damage caused by raising the threshold for mortgage interest relief from £25,000 to £30,000 last year. The Treasury did not want to make that change. Everybody knows that it was forced through by the Prime Minister against all the advice of the Treasury. I suspect that the Chancellor or the Treasury will get their own back and will make a case for mortgage tax relief, just as a case was made for life insurance some years ago by a Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer. We would support that and could find plenty of things to spend the money on. For a start, we could stop these cuts.
Many hon. Members have said that the subject is complex. There were warnings that the scheme would not be easy to introduce. Indeed, I remind you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that you also have 3,000 constituents who suffer from the complexities of the legislation. However, when the House debated the regulations that introduced housing benefit on 26 July 1982, I found myself speaking for the Opposition. It was a choice between doing that or being a midwife, due to the circumstances of Ann Taylor who then spoke on housing. At that time, as the hon. Member for Derbyshire, South has said, the change occurred. The budget was swapped from the Department of the Environment to the DHSS. The former Minister, the hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Sir H. Rossi), said that social security regulations were
lengthy and difficult to understand … housing benefit, is from the same mould.


The Minister then went on to make a great boast about how the Government would, under the regulations, make more people eligible for housing benefit. That immediately knocks on the head the arguments put forward by the Prime Minister, the Secretary of State and the hon. Member for Derbyshire, South that things have got out of control. More people were to collect the money. The Minister then said:
I shall refer to some changes in more detail as I come to the relevant regulations. However, the House might find it useful now to be given an overall view by my drawing together the improvements in the existing rebate and allowance schemes. First, we are widening the definition of rent eligible for rebate.
The Minister proceeded to give a list of things that would widen the scheme. He then said:
Secondly, we are widening the classes of tenants who can claim rebates to include service occupants and licensees, caravans and houseboat dwellers".
The Minister gave a third class when he said:
Thirdly, we have created some new disregards"—
again, it was intended to bring more people within the scope of housing benefit—
those items of income that need not be taken into account when calculating entitlement to benefit.
They include TOPS travel allowances, parental contributions towards the maintenance of children in advanced education and pensions paid to the victims of Nazi persecution".—[Official Report, 26 July 1982; Vol. 28, c. 754–755.]
Those were all pluses, deliberately designed in July 1982—not a generation ago—in the full knowledge that more people would have the right to claim housing benefit. That widening was supported by all hon. Members. No hon. Member opposed it, although I admit that the Opposition voted against the regulations. We did so because, although we agreed with the principle of a unified housing benefit system, the Government were not introducing—and they do not now operate—a unified housing benefit system. There were too many losers for our liking.
We warned Ministers about the regulations. I remember using a phrase of the Child Poverty Action Group and describing the regulations as byzantine in their complexity. There was a three-hour debate on the subject. The Minister spent an hour and nine minutes moving the motion and the Under-Secretary of State spent 30 minutes concluding the debate. An hour and a half was left for other hon. Members, including the Opposition Front Bench, to debate what we are trying to put right tonight. It was late July, and hon. Members disappeared from the House. The Terrace was full of parties and there was not one Member of Parliament who could claim at the end of the three hours that he had not been called to speak. All those who wanted to speak managed to speak, even though only an hour and a half was left. That is symptomatic of what is wrong and of how complex we have made our social security system. As soon as hon. Members mention figures, the Chamber empties. That is true of both sides of the House, irrespective of the petty point made by the hon. Member for Derbyshire, South. As the hon. Member for Bury, North so eloquently explained, the reality comes home to hon. Members when they hold their surgeries. We can then see why we must oppose these further cuts in benefit.
I should like to comment on housing benefit in Birmingham. I do not want to rake over the old arguments that have taken place in the House. However, I should like

to correct the record. I shall refer to what is happening now, because it reinforces the need for the review, which is mentioned in paragraph 26 of the Secretary of State's response to the Social Security Advisory Committee.
The hon. Member for Derbyshire, South said that when she was chairman of the housing committee in Birmingham she discovered that the Departments were not talking to each other. The situation was worse than that. She referred only to the DHSS and the Department of the Environment, but things got so bad that the city housing department of which she was chairman lost contact with the Department of the Environment. She must know about the exchange of correspondence after she ceased to become chairman.
I have a letter with me from the city housing officer dated 29 July 1983, when the hon. Lady was a Member of Parliament. A long letter of complaint was sent by the city council to the Department of the Environment. I shall not use many quotations, but I wish to make my point. The city housing officer wrote:
Liaison in some areas appears to have virtually broken down.
That is a reference to liaison between the city council officials and the Department of the Environment over the problems of transition and the start-up of the scheme in Birmingham.
The regional officer of the DHSS replied to that letter on 14 September 1983. I shall put two quotations on the record. The letter was written by Mr. Green. His letter back to the city housing officer states:
My enquiries do not confirm your claim that liaison in some areas appears to have virtually broken down and I don't think it helps anyone for such a statement to be made in the press.
That put the city housing officer in his place. In that respect I defend the city housing officer, because liaison had clearly broken down. The regional officer then said:
From my enquiries it is clear that some difficulties relating to Housing Benefit still exist"—
this is July 1983—
and we must avoid taking up entrenched positions, each blaming the other for difficulties and shortcomings.
I should like to highlight some of those shortcomings by putting some of the details on the record.

Mrs. Currie: Will the hon. Gentleman acknowledge that the effort that was made to bring Departments together was actually made by the city of Birmingham housing department?

Mr. Rooker: I accept that. I do not lay the blame at the door of a department or an individual. However, sometimes a chief officer, chairman or Secretary of State has to carry the can. That is the reality of life. They are in charge of the system. My constituents feel that it is they who have damaged their incomes. A lot of false hopes were raised about the introduction of housing benefit. Everyone thought that they would get rid of arrears and that the system would be dead easy to introduce.
Ministers were responsible for saying this when they claimed that the money would go straight from the DHSS to the city councils and district councils, and people would not have the chance not to pay the rent. The hon. Member for Derbyshire, South fell into the same trap in July 1982, in the rent sub-committee of Birmingham city council. The minutes say:
Councillor Mrs. Currie pointed out that when the scheme was in operation the time spent by staff in pursuing rent arrears would be substantially reduced.


That was in July 1982. In June 1982, the rent arrears in the city of Birmingham stood at £7·9 million—I am using rounded figures. By March 1983, they were £11·6 million. That was one of the largest proportional increases in rent arrears in the history of the city council of Birmingham.

Mrs. Currie: I know that the hon. Gentleman was in the thick of this, as I was. Will he admit that one of the reasons for the growth in the arrears was that half the social security officers in the city were on strike for much of that time? I acknowledge the effort that he and other colleagues on both sides of the House made to get people hack to work, but if the offices were shut we could not get anything out of them.

Mr. Rooker: The Lady is moving her position. I am grateful for the point that she has just made about myself and my hon. Friends, because when she first came to the House, in a speech to which I have referred, she made it clear that she held us responsible for keeping the offices closed.
The Birmingham city council was further misled into believing that the system would be easy to adminster and operate because in the same set of minutes of 8 July the chairman of the rent sub-committee, who at that time was probably Councillor Williams, and who was under the authority of the chairman of the housing committee—the hon. Lady—
expressed the view that additional staff would not be required to administer the scheme.
Birmingham, the largest housing authority in the country, was saying in July 1982 that it would not need any extra staff to administer the scheme. As I understand it, the net result was that 130 extra staff had to be appointed to administer the scheme. That would be fine if people were getting their housing benefit, but they are not now on 14 February 1984.
Before I explain why they are not getting the housing benefit and give the stark examples that should send shivers down the spines of Conservative Members—those who have them—I shall refer back to the point that I made during the speech of the hon. Lady. She claimed, as she has claimed before, in June and July of last year—I do not know because I was not in the Chamber at the time, and I am sorry but I have not read the speech, whether she retracted these claims in February —that that under her stewardship of the Birmingham housing authority things were going fine, there were lots of extra repairs, good administration of housing and the system was running in tip-top condition—I am paraphrasing.

Mr. J. F. Pawsey: Due to the sales.

Mr. Rooker: She may have said that, but that is not the point that I shall make. The hon. Lady spoke about repairs again tonight and gave the figure of 26 per cent. After the hon. Lady's speech in July last year, one of the councillors wrote to the city of Birmingham housing authority chief officer and said:
Dear Mr. Waddington, From time to time, reference is made in the City Council and elsewhere to the effect that the number of council house repairs carried out in the six months after May 1982 was greater than in the previous six months.
That is the claim that the hon. Lady is making. He continued:
As I recall, the explanation for this, at the time, was that the rapid introduction of DLO legislation caused a tremendous amount of re-organisation in the Department.

This caused a hiatus at the fag end of 1981–82.
The deputy city housing officer responded to this point in a letter to the council on 8 August, highlighted the logjam of work in that department caused by the introduction of direct labour organisation legislation, and pointed out that:
You will recall that the winter of 1981/82 was particularly severe and we had to deal with an unprecedented number of burst pipes and associated plumbing problems. Other work virtually ground to a halt and, whilst some trades—plumbers. roofers and drainers in particular—were very busy, others were not … The figures do show an increased number of repairs completed during 1982/83 than in 1981/82. This, for the reasons I have described"—
which is the reorganisation of the DLOs and other factors—
is hardly surprising".
For the hon. Lady to make the points that she has made is not a defence of the Government in their introduction of housing benefit. To keep pointing out that we were running a tight ship in "Brum" when every time a Member for Birmingham says that it is still chaos in Birmingham — I say that again today — and constituents are not getting their benefits, and for the hon. Lady to keep trumpeting the fact, irrespective of that, that more repairs are being done, does not help the Government. That is true for one particular snapshot of the period for the reasons that I have explained.

Mrs. Currie: I am not sure how the activities of Birmingham city council are relevant to this debate. However, my back is broad. I ask the hon. Gentleman to confirm that the capital programme that I inherited from his Labour colleagues in 1981–82 was £41 million, but I managed to extend it to £60 million, that I instituted a housing capital budget of £128 million, the amount that is available this year, that most of that money was made available because of the sale of council houses, which, by the end of this year, will have achieved £100 million of sales in Birmingham under the 1980 Act, and that the direct labour department, with which I am proud to be associated, under my control made a profit of £5 million last year.

Mr. Rooker: That may be so, but the deputy city housing officer went on to point out that the hon. Lady had overspent on the repair budget to the tune of £4·7 million. I am all in favour of overspending on repair budgets to get the repairs done, but one cannot do that and come to the House and make the assertions that the hon. Lady has made. It is highly relevant that, without my mentioning it, she has made that point. I should not have gone into the detail that I did if the hon. Lady had not made that point.
Birmingham and housing benefit still do not go together, and they will not do so after the statutory instruments are approved tonight, assuming that the Government use their majority. I shall give the House three examples of how people are affected. Two of them have occurred in the past few days and one in the past year. This is the nightmare that tens of thousands of people are living through at the moment. I have a letter sent by the city housing department, but not to one of my constituents. It was sent to me by a councillor. He woke up one morning on 18 July 1983 and received a letter saying:
Your rent rebate application has now received careful consideration … I regret to inform you that you are not entitled to a rebate at the present moment.
However, it has been possible to grant you an allowance of £533·20. This amount covers rebate due from the date of your


application up until the date you started receiving Housing Benefit and this amount will be credited to your rent account on 18th July 1983.
First, he is told that he will not get it, and then he is told that he has £533·20. The man does not know where he stands, but on 22 July he gets a letter from the same office saying:
Rent Arrears.
In spite of previous warnings, my records show that you are still failing to pay your rent regularly … Your circumstances will be considered by the Committee at their meeting at the Council House, Victoria Square … on 27th July.
He is told to bring the letter and rent voucher books with him, and that he will probably have to pay the court costs if the matter goes to the courts. This was at a time in mid-1983 when there was still an argument, and an initial correspondence between the city housing department and the regional office of the DHSS, about whether there was a liaison. This is the effect of all that confusion, with people waking up to such correspondence.
In the past two days I have received two representations from my constituents, one on Friday and one yesterday. I will take the one I received yesterday first. A telephone call was made to me at the House. The lady lives alone. She is aged 81 and has a private landlord. Her rent is £20·89 a week. She is in receipt of a supplementary pension of £34·48 plus a small pension from IMI of £8·20 every two weeks. Her income in total appears to be approximately £38·58 comprised of her state pension of £34·48 and £4·10 for the IMI pension. She has just been told by Bush house—I do not know whether to describe it as the Kremlin or Lubjanka from the point of view of the council tenants of Birmingham—that she has been overpaid housing benefit and has to pay back £548·18 from last July. That works out to approximately £20 a week.
Bush house is saying to a woman of 81, living alone, that she was not entitled to any housing benefit, and this is supposed to have been sorted out. One can imagine what she and her family are going through. I have told her not to pay the rent. The landlord is a private landlord and for all I know, might be relying on the rent for income. It is a scandal.
That is as bad as—I shall not say it is worse than—what I learnt last Friday. I was handed a letter from a constituent about his parents:
Can you look into a problem please. My parents"—
I shall not read the address, because that would be unfair—
are pensioners 75/73 years of age and have not received any assistance with their rent of £25 pw for 3/4 months. They have continued to pay the rent weekly out of old age pension but have now run out of savings which they had had to use to supplement their income. A visit, and also a phone call, to College Road Housing Department Office which issued the rent book has gained the response that their records were not at College Road and they should go to Bush House to enquire. A call to Bush House gave the information that DHSS at Walsall Road should be contacted as the matter was nothing to do with them. After a wait of two weeks a visitor from DHSS put the problem firmly back with College Road Housing and also said that they should only be paying water rates anyway. They are now desperately short of money having paid out between £250/300 of their savings and I have only just found out, when they asked me for money. It would seem that somewhere the buck is being passed.
I pass the buck to the Secretary of State. At the end of the day, he is responsible. I will take these matters up with the housing department, but at the end of the day it was this Government who, on a Whips drove the system

through the House of Commons without proper detailed legislation. The legislation was an enabling Bill upstairs, and there was nothing really to debate. A three-hour debate took place in the House in late July less than two years ago when there was insufficient opportunity to discuss the ramifications. I readily admit that not many hon. Members were queueing up to do that, but that is neither here nor there. The legislation was rushed through. The Government were warned — and some of the warnings came from Conservative Members—that they were attempting to enact the legislation much too quickly and that it would not work.
If the Government had the guts to say, "We think there could be major problems for a few thousand people," they would have some defence in the cases of which I have given details to the House, but they have no arguments; they have shown nothing but utter complacency throughout. When things have gone wrong, they have blamed the local authorities. This has not been assisted, of course, by some of the actions of those who run local authorities who have been insufficiently aware of the implications of housing benefit in their cities.
The question that my constituents will want to be answered is when this will stop. My constituents will know of the debates in the House last year. There was a big row in Birmingham with a great deal of publicity. The matter was raised in the House towards the end of the year, and the House is considering housing benefit yet again tonight. It is abundantly clear, from hearing about the problems of the citizens of Birmingham, that the housing benefit system is not working. What do I do? Do I listen to the Minister and say, "Oh, he's going to fix it, everything will be okay"?
The last time I participated in a debate on this subject the Minister said that Birmingham had had an extension of three months, and everything would be ready and working by 31 December. That statement was made from the Dispatch Box last summer. But the system is not working. I cannot accept the Minister's statement that it will come right in the end, because I cannot see any end to the problem. I ask the Minister to use what authority he has, which I suspect is very little, and to have the guts to say when winding up the debate: "I've listened to the debate. Not many hon. Members have spoken in favour of the orders. There was the hon. Member for Saffron Walden (Mr. Haselhurst)" — for whom I have great respect—"and the hon. Member for Derbyshire, South (Mrs. Currie) I do not say I have no respect for the hon. Lady, but I have not seen her operate in the House sufficiently to know whether she deserves my respect or not. "Only those two hon. Members have supported the regulations. As Minister for Social Security, I shall not have any more truck with the guff that civil servants are dishing out to me, or with the Chancellor and the Treasury who are forcing us to implement a system that the House and our constituents know does not work"; and then to say at about five minutes to Ten o'clock, "I beg to ask leave to withdraw the regulations and orders."

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Paul Dean): Before I call the next hon. Member, I should tell the House that the winding-up speeches are expected to begin at approximately 9.20 pm. Six hon. Members still wish to speak, so I appeal for brief contributions.

Mr. David Sumberg: I acknowledge your request, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and I shall be brief. Many of the points that I wished to make have already been made eloquently in the debate.
The debate presents me with a difficulty, for I face a clash of loyalty, and I make no apologies for saying so. I have a loyalty to the Government, whose policies I support, and whose record on pensions is good. Equally, I have a loyalty to some of the principles that brought me into Conservative politics. One of those principles is the community's responsibility to those in need who cannot help themselves, and particularly to those who, with a little assistance, wish to try to help themselves. It is with the latter group of people that I am particularly concerned.
There are two groups of people to whom Conservatives should give a little help—the occupational pensioner and those on low incomes, many of them council house buyers who are buying their own homes. As many hon. Members have said, occupational pensioners are people who have scrimped and saved over the years, often at great sacrifice during their working lives, to provide for themselves some independence and self-respect when they retire. They have done so at great cost, because, as my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Mr. Bowden) said, inflation has often ravaged those pensions. I must pay tribute to the Government, because they have controlled inflation, and they are winning the battle against inflation, which, for every pensioner on a fixed income, is vital.
It ill-becomes some Opposition Members to wax eloquently on the ills of the measures when, if their policies were ever implemented, the disaster for people on fixed incomes in inflation terms would be horrendous. The Conservative party supports thrift and savings. While I appreciate that the tax system is often unhelpful to savers, the problem with the measures is that they affect the poorest of the thrifty. They are the people who truly rely on the Conservative Government for assistance.
I mentioned at the beginning of my speech another group that will be affected adversely by the measures. That group, which has not yet been mentioned in the debate, comprises those on low incomes who are buying their council houses. Many of them are young couples, who have benefited from one of the best measures that the Government introduced — the right of council house tenants to buy their homes. It was a big gamble to take that decision, and many of them rewarded our initiative by voting for the Conservative party, and for me, at the election. Some of them probably voted Conservative for the first time. Their quest for independence from the state is also our quest.
I make no apology for adding my tribute to the way in which my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has tried to deal with the problem. He has been willing to listen, to make concessions, and at all times to see the magnitude of the problem which many hon. Members have mentioned. That factor weighs heavily with me, because I believe that the review is crucial. I shall listen carefully to what my hon. Friend the Minister says when replying to the debate, because I am in a position similar to that of my hon. Friend the Member for Saffron Walden (Mr. Haselhurst). If my hon. Friend the Minister can assure me that the review will be thorough and exhaustive, and that

it will consider all the options, I shall reluctantly and with many doubts go into the Government Lobby tonight. I hope that he can give me that assurance.

Mr. Charles Kennedy: I am sure that the Minister will agree that hon. Members on both sides of the House believe that the nightmare of the scheme is its complexity. The most accurate comment about it, which has probably not got on the official record —perhaps I could introduce it in this way—was made by the Secretary of State. When someone criticised his policy and said that it was being administered by the Treasury, he turned round and said to one of his hon. Friends, "I wish it was." That sums up the matter, because the Treasury has dictated the financial policy that underpins this decision. Although it may be harsh and unrealistic, as has been said, Ministers would be happy if someone else had to carry through this measure. We sympathise with them to that extent. However, sympathy must be limited, since the problem is of their own making.
In a written answer to me on 30 January this year, the Minister for Social Security said:
We shall announce final decisions on our proposals shortly"—
my question was about the 1 April deadline for the implementation of the proposed cuts in housing benefit—
taking account of the need for local authorities to he given adequate time to implement them." — [Official Report, 30 January 1984; Vol. 53, c. 102]
The revised statement extended the period to November, and then we heard that it would be extended for another year. In addition, the Secretary of State has announced a review. The problem is that if a fundamental and wide-ranging review is considered necessary—the Secretary of State said that it would be very broad—and if the deadlines are relaxed to extend wither to November this year or one year hence, why is the interim implementation going ahead? It does not make sense, since, as has been said time and again, if one places the saving involved alongside the group of people who must provide it—the pensioners—it is out of all proportion.
As we have seen from the debate, that view crosses party lines and is held by those at various extremes in the political spectrum. I hope that the Minister, in the light of his written reply to me, will recognise that and accept the impossible position in which local authorities have been placed. We must show the Government the hypocrisy of their position. With the housing benefit scheme, they are willing to turn over everything to the local authorities, which must administer the system. That will deflect criticism of its horrendous practical implications. In that case, the Government say that local authority decision-making, accountability and control are important. How can that be consistent with their views about local authorities in other areas, and their proposals for rate-capping? The truth is that if it suits the Government or Cabinet Ministers, local authorities must be bashed and rate-capped, but, equally, when it suits them, local authorities should be left to deal with the mess that Ministers have created. They want to wash their hands of this scheme. I do not expect the Minister to withdraw the measures when he replies to the debate, but we live in hope.
The Secretary of State spoke about an increase in real terms in the housing benefit child needs allowance from


£1 to £1·50, but he said that the increase would be phased in over 12 months. What does he mean by the words, "in real terms"? The Minister will appreciate the basic economic consideration that, as the increase will be phased in over a period, it presumes a great deal about the rate of inflation. Although the rate is lower than it has been for several years, none the less it presumes that it will remain low. If, during the next 12 months, the Government have the same success in administering the economy as they have had during the past 12 months in administering the housing benefit scheme, we cannot be confident that the real increases of which the Secretary of State spoke will be forthcoming. Perhaps the Minister can clarify that for me.
There is no doubt that the proposed review will examine the complexity of the housing benefit scheme. Perhaps the Minister will pass to the review team an argument that has been made strongly by alliance Members: that the complexity and scale of means-tested benefits has reached the stage where, first, the take-up rate is significantly less than it should be and, secondly, that it does not help those in the poverty trap for whom it is designed. In the cause of greater selectivity, and of trying to solve the appalling problems that have arisen under the housing benefit scheme, will the review team seriously consider introducing a new scheme of basic benefits based on a credit system, such as that for housing, rather than continuing this maze and tangle, which often lead to human misery?
The real point of this debate cannot be ignored, and perhaps it was best made by Shelter, which stated that the case for the Government to withdraw these proposals was overwhelming. I hope that, in view of the strong expressions of reservation to downright opposition, and certainly of general distaste, that have been expressed by hon. Members in all parts of the House, the Minister will think again. By doing so, he will be doing something practical and proper which, at the end of the day, will be welcomed, especially by those in the poverty trap who are suffering most of all. We urge him at this late stage to reconsider the position.

Mr. James Couchman: I must at the outset apologise to the Secretary of State for being absent when he spoke at the beginning of the debate; I was at another meeting elsewhere in the House.
We have heard a great deal from the Opposition Benches which suggests that my right hon. Friend is indulging in some sort of reverse Robin Hood act. The hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Meacher) spoke of taking away £230 million from the poor and said that that had been reduced by a measly £35 million from April and only £15 million from November.
We are not speaking of the very poorest. Although we had a great deal of talk about the very poorest from the hon. Member for Oldham, West, those on supplementary benefit are to be protected from the reductions in housing benefit which are suggested by the instruments that are before the House. We are, in fact, talking of families whose incomes may be considerably greater than those at the bottom of the scale. We are talking about families with incomes greater than the average industrial wage, and a number of examples have been given.
We have had the family of four—a man, his wife and two children—the man with his two working sons earning perhaps £100 each, a total income of £15,000 a year going into the household, and still having an entitlement to housing benefit of nearly £5 a week. We believe that that is wrong, and the provisions which deal with non-dependent relatives will take some care of that.
We are talking of a family where the father and single son or daughter may have a total household income of £11,000 a year, and still qualify for a rebate of nearly £2·50 a week on rent and rates of just £27 a week. We are talking of a couple with an income of £10,000 a year, including child benefit, with two dependent children and the husband only working, who might receive housing benefit if their rate bill were just £11 a week, and £11 a week is not a large rate bill in London, where we have some highly profligate Labour-controlled councils imposing extremely high rates indeed—[Interruption.] —not 1 million miles from here.
Of course, we regret that there will be pensioners with occupational pensions of not a great amount who will suffer a reduction in housing benefit as a result of these instruments. But even the much publicised single pensioner with retirement and occupational pension totalling £4,000 a year, which is £76·92 a week, paying £18 a week rent and £5 a week rates, is not among the poorest in society. She will lose £2·33 a week from April and £3·33 from November. Under the original scheme, before the recent moderations introduced by my right hon. Friend, she would have lost £4·52. That proves that consultation and discussion has improved her situation by about £1·20 a week. But that hypothetical lady has an income of half of what the average industrial wage-earner is bringing up his entire family on. Her circumstances are not those of the very poor.
Of course, nobody wants to reduce any benefits that have already been given, but it is, sadly, not unique in Europe for a constraint to be placed on the social security budget in many countries; several of our EEC partners are having to reduce benefits, or at least keep increases for inflation to below the level of inflation. If constraint on the social security budget of £37 billion is necessary and must be applied, then clearly the housing benefit is the least unacceptable. It is rapidly becoming an old sore that housing benefit extends further up the income scale than any other benefit.

Mr. Nicholas Lyell: My hon. Friend has given some pertinent examples. Would he agree that if we could make progress down the tax reductions road so that tax thresholds were raised, even by quite small amounts, many of the people whose examples he has given would find themselves better off than they are today.

Mr. Couchman: That is so, as we have heard much talk of the poverty trap. By increasing the thresholds for income tax, the greatest benefit is felt by all taxpayers, including the people to whom I have referred. The hon. Member for Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley (Mr. Foulkes) spoke of 45 per cent. of households in Scotland receiving housing benefit and one third of households in England and Wales receiving housing benefit. Many of those households are paying significant income tax, so this is a case of transferring money from one pocket to another


in the same pair of trousers. That is ludicrous and it arises not so much from the low threshold for income tax as from much too high a cut-off point for housing benefit.
My hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire, South (Mrs. Currie) spoke at some length of the generosity of the housing benefit system, and I will not repeat what she said. The hon. Members for Oldham, West and for Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley made much of the recent modest increase in mortgage tax relief. They spoke of the cost of that relief being £2·8 billion per year; that was quoted directly, interestingly, from a brief prepared by the Low Pay Unit. Let them compare that cost with the cost of housing benefit, which will reach £3·8 billion this year. The social security bill is £37 billion this year and it is in danger of running totally out of control.
I have some sympathy for the plea made by the hon. Members for Roxburgh and Berwickshire (Mr. Kirkwood) and for Ross, Cromarty and Skye (Mr. Kennedy) for a tax credit system which would replace the present maze of benefits and allowances. Failing that, I welcome my right hon. Friend's setting up of a review team to investigate housing benefit and its mechanism and administration. I trust that it will be able to look at, and investigate in depth, some of the curiosities of the present system, such as the ability of students living in halls of residence to claim housing benefit; at some of the obscure regulations that allow people on a short spell in prison to claim housing benefit, and to claim it retrospectively; and at the fact that some people who are in possession of two homes can in certain circumstances claim housing benefit. I hope that the review team will be able to look in a wide way at the whole workings of this benefit.
We on these Benches believe in providing benefit to those in real need. Housing benefit is at present going to those not in real need. It is not being directed at those who really need it, and by casting the net too wide the help given to those in real need is diluted. Tonight's proposals go some way to reducing benefits to those who are not in real need and I hope that that will allow my right hon. Friend to direct more generously to those who really are among the poorest. For my part, I shall support the Government in the Lobby tonight.

Mr. Chris Smith: When the faithful few debated this subject at 5 o'clock in the morning during the Consolidated Fund debate shortly before Christmas, I spoke of the chaos which attended upon the introduction of the housing benefit scheme in both 1982 and April 1983. I spoke also of the inadequate time which had been available to local authorities to implement it, of the insufficient information which was available to them from the DHSS, the lack of proper resources which were allowed to authorities properly to implement the scheme and the chaos which resulted from all of those factors together with the inevitable chaos caused by the complexity of the scheme, of which many right hon. and hon. Members from both sides of the House have spoken. That chaos forms the background against which the debate takes place.
The system is a mess already and the package of cuts will make it more of a mess. That is why my colleagues and I intend to oppose the regulations root and branch. I refer to it as the Lawson package, because that is where the blame should lie. It is neither a Fowler package nor a Boyson package. If he had had his way, I am sure that the

Secretary of State would not have embarked on such a petty means of removing £190 million from Britain's public spending.
I said also in the debate shortly before Christmas that the original package which was proposed, of cuts of £230 million, would be disastrous, especially for pensioners with a modest occupational pension as well as the state retirement pension and for families with low incomes with dependants living at home, who are already caught in the poverty trap. The effect on those two groups of the modified package of cuts will be slightly less severe than that of the original package, but it will still be severe. The great majority of the proposals in the original package have been deferred and not abandoned.
We shall see one set of proposals introduced in April and a further set of damaging proposals introduced in November. There are two factors that worry me. The first factor is the adjustments to rent tapers. There will be a rise from 21p to 26p in April, which will be followed by a further 3p rise in November. Secondly, I and my constituents are concerned — many of those whom I represent are living in private rented accommodation—by the high rent thresholds, which will be raised in November and not, thank goodness, in April. Many of my constituents will be hit severely when that happens.
When the Secretary of State introduced the new proposals a week or so ago, he said that he thought---he admitted that he was speaking from memory— that no one would suffer by more than £3 a week. That is more or less true for April, but it is completely wrong for November. Come November, many households will suffer by considerably more than £3 a week. Even if we are talking about people suffering a loss of £2, £2·50 or £2·99 a week, the Secretary of State and the Government do not seem to realise that for many people and households throughout the country a sum of £2·50 or £3 a week is a major proportion of their available spendable income. An amount which to the right hon. Gentleman or myself might be a mere addition to our budgets is to those people a major blow. They cannot afford to lose that sort of money.
When the hon. Member for Gillinghani (Mr. Couchman) said that we were not talking about the very poorest, technically he was right. We are not talking about those who are below the safety net. However, we are directing our attention to those who are only marginally better off than the very poorest, and they should still demand the attention, respect and care of the House. Sums of £2, £3 or £4 in April and £6 or £7 in November will mean a great deal to such families.
It was a cheek for the hon. Member for Derbyshire, South (Mrs. Currie) to talk about the housing benefit scheme as a form of feather-bedding. That is an insult to many who are living in abject, desperate poverty. I should like the hon. Lady to meet a lady who visited one of my constituency surgeries a few weeks ago. She had received a bill from the gas board because the meter through which she had been paying for her gas had been under-registering. As a result, she had received a bill for £11, a sum which she could not possibly pay. She was in receipt of a small occupational pension and she will be affected by the regulations before us. I should like the hon. Lady to meet that lady and to tell her that the Government's policies are working and that the removal of money from her weekly income will not have a disastrous effect upon her.
For all the talk of tapers, the complex jargon of the system and the claimed amelioration of disaster, the plain and simple truth is that there are many who will suffer because of the decisions that the Minister will ask the House to take. The problem will be exacerbated still further. Local authorities will be required to implement changes which we heard about only last week. They will be expected to implement the changes on 1 April. In my constitutency there is already a backlog of two or three months' work in dealing with applications for housing benefits under the original scheme. Frankly, one lives in a fantasy world if one expects the local authority instantly, not just to wipe away that backlog, but to implement changes for large numbers of people who are already assessed for housing benefit.
People in my constituency, just as in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr. Rooker), are receiving rent arrears letters because the DHSS has not come up with the right figures or because the housing department has not yet worked out the assessment for housing benefit. People are, therefore, desperately worried, and in some cases are making the decision to go without food, heat or light to ensure that they can pay the rent.
The system is not working. To assume that somehow, between now and April, changes can be imposed on top of all those problems is ludicrous. In April the chaos will not just be worse. The local authorities will be required to make changes not only in April, but again in November. If the Secretary of State thinks that local authorities can simply adjust the tapers, the high rent figures, the nondependent deductions and the minimum payments by touching a few computer buttons and running the system through a perfectly working model, he obviously has not experienced the way in which the scheme is operating in inner city areas such as the one I represent. The administrative chaos resulting from the imposition of these changes will add to the difficulties facing many people.
It must be remembered that some—not many—local authorities may find that the extra administrative costs imposed on them by these changes will not be met by setup costs and possibly will count against them for penalties when their rate support grants are assessed. They will find that, for implementing one set of decisions taken by the Government, they will be penalised by another set of decisions, also taken by the Government, imposed in the form of penalties by the Department of the Environment. I should like the Minister to give a guarantee that, where a local authority can clearly substantiate to the satisfaction of the Department of the Environment that the additional costs have been incurred by the implementation of these changes, the additional costs will not count against local authority expenditure when it is assessed for penalty under the rate support grant system.
We see additional chaos being imposed upon local authorities, enormous difficulties in administration, contrary to what the Secretary of State believed when he made his statement last week and people suffering—perhaps not the poorest, but those near to the poorest. A scheme which is bad already is being made much worse by the introduction of the Government's changes.

Mr. Richard Holt: Inevitably, I start with a small geography lesson for the sake of some hon. Members. Langbaurgh, my constituency, and Langbaurgh, the local authority, are not coterminus. It is important to recognise that, because my constituency is being taken to task because it had the temerity to return a Conservative Member of Parliament. Largesse from the ratepayers and taxpayers is spent out in that part of Langbaurgh which has a Labour Member of Parliament.
In taking to heart Mr. Deputy Speaker's strictures to keep speeches short, I shall underline the difference in political views of a local authority such as Langbaurgh. Many right hon. and hon. Members have never heard of Langbaurgh, stuck, as it is, in the north-east of England, yet it has certain claims to fame or infamy, depending on one's view. Langbaurgh is the local authority that has the highest figures—these can be taken from Hansard—for the excess of expenditure target over grant-related expenditure in the country. The local authority has the highest subsidy per council dwelling in the country. Those two statistics are painful reading to some people, especially those of my constituents who must suffer under the regime that runs Langbaurgh borough council
Last Friday, although there were not many hon. Members present, we had an interesting debate on future social benefits initiated by my hon. Friend the Member for Wealden (Sir G. Johnson Smith). We discussed some of the matters that we are discussing this evening. I make that point to show that neither side of the Chamber has a monopoly of caring. We all care, and many of us are still ambivalent about this evening's vote. In the final analysis, we must decide. We cannot be complete cowards.
When I see the people in Langbaurgh who will suffer most, I must vote with the Government, because Langbaurgh borough council intended to introduce a two-tier differential rent scheme. It was going to increase the rents of the poorest and the least able to pay. In that way, taxes would have fallen on all. It has not done so because counsel's opinion was that the scheme would not have been upheld.
For thenext increase, the council has introduced a three-tier system. It is:
(a) Group 1 (Bungalows, Ground floor flats, Aged persons flats and Multi-storey flats)—£2·50 per week.
(b) Group 2 (Houses)£2·00 per week.
(c) Group 3 (Dwellings other than those in groups 1 and 2)—£1·50 per week.

Mr. Field: I understand why the hon. Gentleman will vote against this measure, but there are five votes tonight. Does that mean that he will be with us on the other four?

Mr. Holt: The hon. Gentleman must wait and see. That intervention came as I was seeking to draw to the attention of the House, the Minister and the world that when an authority such as Langbaurgh, run by rather way-out Left-wing people of modest intelligence, brings forward rent reviews of this nature, they by definition fall hardest on those least able to pay because the council disregards all those who are not in receipt of benefit. That is what the Labour-controlled Langbaurgh council is doing to my constituents. That is why I am supporting the Government. There is no reason for the Langbaurgh council to have introduced that pernicious tax.
As many right hon. and hon. Members will be aware, I had not even heard of Langbaurgh 12 months ago before


the general election. I have made it my business to find out rapidly as much as I can about the way in which the authority runs compared with the authority of which I was leader before coming here.
It was interesting for me to note that, given the level of council house rents, the number of council houses and the various other aspects of running housing, expenditure on housing in Langbaurgh costs an additional £750,000 this year. That is a tax that people must pay and is not a matter in which I take any great pride. It is something that we must tackle.
I introduced myself to the housing manager of Langbaurgh council shortly after I was elected. Unfortunately, he fell out with the leader of the council and his desk was cleared in a few hours.

Mr. Pawsey: Did he get £200,000?

Mr. Holt: I have no idea.
When discussing benefit, we always find ourselves considering those on the margin. The moving of the trap will always affect some people. We can always give examples and, in the end, make a case. However, we must look at the overall picture. I was very unhappy about the measures as they were first introduced to the House a few weeks ago. I should like publicly to thank the Minister for seeing me and listening to my representations. Afterwards, he was able to make some changes.
I welcome the review that has been announced. The review may acknowledge the fact that, although nobody likes to make reductions, and we would all like to be Santa Claus every day of the week, every time somebody is Santa Claus, somebody else pays. The ratepayers and taxpayers of Langbaurgh at the Cleveland end are paying far too much over the odds as opposed to those at the Redcar end, who are being feather-bedded by the Left-wing Labour local authority. If such an uncaring authority can introduce differentials in rentals such as I have described — an authority of the type that Labour Members openly espouse and support—no doubt Labour Members will join us in the Lobbies to support the Minister, who is seeking to bring some common sense into housing benefit.

Mr. Geoffrey Lofthouse: This is a debate of a type that is becoming familiar to the House. The Government can find few supporters to present their case. Before the hon. Member for Langbaurgh (Mr. Holt) began to speak, there had been only three, and I cannot make up my mind whether or not the hon. Gentleman supports the Government. However, no doubt Conservative Members will troop into the Lobby later tonight behind their political masters, like good boys and girls, to vote for something in which they do not believe.
I am sorry that the hon. Member for Derbyshire, South (Mrs. Currie) has left the Chamber. I understand that she must be feeling deflated after listening to the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr. Rooker). I hope that the hon. Lady will read Hansard tomorrow to hear what I have said. She proudly told us that she represents miners. Miners rarely make mistakes, and they will not make that mistake next time.
The modifications recently announced to the housing benefit measures will give very little comfort to those who need these benefits. The proposals are a complete con.
They have conned many Conservative Members, whose attitude to the modified proposals is rather different from their attitude to the original ones.
I believe—the Minister will correct me if he feels that I am wrong—that some claimants will still lose about £10 a week in November. Average losses in the £2 to £6 range will be reduced by only about 30p to 40p. 'The Government have attempted to make the effects more acceptable by suggesting a maximum loss limit on individual claimants. That is unlikely to be practical or to operate efficiently, because people's circumstances change. Their rents and rates alter, people become out of work, get a job for a couple of weeks and such like. Attempting to organise such a policy will create administrative chaos.
I entirely accept that the full effects of the modified proposals have not been tested. However, it is already clear that the changes in children's needs allowance simply transfer the burden of losses to families with children. Losses among such people might increase, as might the number of people affected. I shall give examples for council tenants in Wakefield. Under the original proposals, 31 per cent. of cases lost. Under the new ones, 31·5 per cent. of cases will lose. Under the original proposals, 35 per cent. of cases in the owner-occupier sector lost. Under the new proposals, that figure will grow to 36 per cent. Although some people might receive some relief from the new proposals, many more will be caught in the poverty trap.
Because of the way in which cuts are to be made, even more families in the Wakefield district will suffer. Under previous proposals, just over 13,500 families and elderly tenants would have suffered a cut in benefits. That has now increased to 13,960, almost 8,600 of them being council tenants. I accept that the Government's new proposals reduce overall suffering slightly, but council tenants will still lose £1·08 per week on average, more than 70 tenants losing more than £4 a week. More than 1,200 families will still lose all benefit. Those are the figures which Wakefield metropolitan council has produced. Perhaps the Minister will choose to refute them.
The Government's new proposals, which include postponing a promised increase in child allowance, deepen the poverty trap for many poor large families. Under the previous proposals, 480,000 people nationally would have lost 70p in the pound of any earnings increase. The new proposals increase that figure to 540,000 from next April. That compares with the Government's reduction of the tax rate for the most wealthy and reveals the truth of their claim to reward initiative.
Commenting on the effect of the proposals on the elderly, the hon. Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Mr. Bowden) described the new proposals as a tax on thrift.. I share that view and suspect that many other Conservative Members do too. It is worth giving some examples of the cuts, as the hon. Member for Gillingham (Mr. Couchman) made great play of the fact that people in the lower income bracket are probably better off. A family with two children, one at school and the other a 17-year-old who is still at home, with a total income of £ 110 per week, paying £16 a week in rent and £5 a week in rates, will lose £1·20 per week and an additional £2·65 in November. when benefits will be reduced further. A pensioner couple with a 50-year-old daughter living with them and receiving the single person benefit, who have an income from pensions and savings of £80 a week, paying £14 in rent and £4 in


rates per week, will lose £1·19 weekly. A single pensioner with a retirement and occupational pension totalling £58·80 a week, paying £11·50 a week in rent and £2 a week rates, will lose 90p a week.
I shall be brief, as I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, West (Mr. Madden) wishes to start the wind-up at 9.20 pm. Before I finish, I have some questions for the Minister. I sincerely hope that the hon. Gentleman will be more successful with his replies than a few weeks ago on "Any Questions", when he found great difficulty in answering questions from people on the receiving end.
The proportion of the administrative cost of the benefits scheme to local authorities is 60 per cent., under the proposals. It is estimated that that proportion will have to rise to 72 per cent. if local authorities are to break even.
Will the Minister assure us categorically that, if local authority expenditure on the scheme does increase to 72 per cent., the Government will meet that increase, and that the grant will be outside the AEG? Some local authorities will be pushed into penalty as a consequence of the policies. If that happens, will the Secretary of State be able to provide a safeguard for them? If not, every £1 extra spent by those authorities on housing benefits under the Government's scheme will cost the authority and its ratepayers from £2 to £6.
I call on all right hon. and hon. Members who can honestly say that they do not agree with the regulations or the policy to join the Opposition in the Lobby tonight to throw out the regulations. We should let the Government have another think after their review put into operation by the regulations, which was a case of putting the cart before the horse.

Mr. Max Madden: Eight days ago, the Secretary of State announced some modifications to the housing benefits scheme to the House. In the debate tonight and in the intervening period, it has become clear that that statement was an elaborate ploy to buy off the widespread opposition to the Government's proposal to cut housing benefit.
The Minister came to the House last week anxious to present himself, and the Government, as compassionate champions of pensioners. He gave the impression that his second thoughts would reduce the income of only a few households, and by small amounts. The media were lobbied, Tory Members were lobbied, and even the hapless Secretary of State for the Environment was wheeled out to calm fears on the Tory Benches that further cuts in housing benefit would not cause further shambolic chaos throughout Britain. But, as his latest announcement was examined in detail, the Secretary of State for Social Services was exposed, not as a champion of the poor, but as a Minister trying to shift wholly unnecessary cuts in housing benefit from one group of poor people to another, by sleight of hand and careful press release.
"Benefit Changes: A new blow to poor" was how The Sunday Times commented last weekend on the latest statement. Age Concern, the London Housing Aid Centre, Shelter and many other organisations have issued replies to the Secretary of State's statement. They all made it clear that the cuts in April and November, taken together, would offer minimal help to pensioners. Indeed, the all-party

parliamentary group for pensioners, chaired jointly by the hon. Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Mr. Bowden) and my hon. Friend the Member for Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley (Mr. Foulkes), said:
Overall losses for pensioners will be marginaly less than they would have been particularly in April when the first proposals come in. However, once the overall package has been implemented in November, the difference between the modified proposals and the original measures will be limited: for example, the average loss to occupational pensioners would have been 80p a week under the original proposals, though the average weekly loss will be 'only 59p' in April, it will be 73p in November. As Age Concern points out, this 'gain' of 7p a week means that pensioners will still be losing the equivalent of two weeks food spending in a full year".
The Secretary of State has arranged for cuts by instalments, with cuts in April, cuts in November and further cuts in April next year. As has been said in the debate, the most mean and miserable aspect of his latest proposals, which do not echo the statement by the Secretary of State for Defence in his leadership bid at the weekend, when he talked in glowing terms about the Tory party having to have an open mind and a warm heart, is the way in which the working poor, especially those with large families, will be clobbered by the Secretary of State for Social Services. A family with four children earning £100 a week, which was not previously affected, will lose £1·32 a week. Throughout the debate, in which supporters of the proposals have been extremely sparse, hon. Members on both sides of the House have talked about the impact of the proposals upon their constituents. The most graphic description was given by my hon. Friend the Member for Pontefract and Castleford (Mr. Lofthouse), who illustrated the sharp impact that they will have on his constituents in the Wakefield area.
For a Government led by a Prime Minister who claims to set so much store in the well-being of families to cut the family budgets of the poorest families, some of which were not hit by the previous cuts in housing benefit, is disgraceful. For a Government, who, with winks and nods, are telling journalists that they want to help poor families by lifting tax thresholds in the Budget, to clobber those self-same families by cutting their housing benefits represents a dazzling degree of brass-necked hypocrisy, even for this discredited, double-dealing, deceitful Administration. The Government prattle on about the need to pull more people out of the so-called poverty trap, but cuts in housing benefits are pushing more of the working poor deeper into the poverty trap.
Under the previous proposals, about 480,000 people would have lost 70p in the pound—very high rates of marginal taxation. Under the latest proposals that figure will increase to 540,000 people. Indeed, by April next year it will still be more than 500,000 people. Instead of being helped by the Government to obtain a better standard of living for their children and themselves, the working poor are battling to survive against sky-high rates of marginal taxation.
The Secretary of State referred to this at length in his speech. Ministers complain about the amount of public money going into housing benefit and use that as a reason for justifying the cuts, but they fail to explain—and the Secretary of State failed to explain today—that the steep rise in public spending on housing benefit is due directly to Government policy. The Government have more than doubled unemployment. They have more than doubled rents. Those are the major reasons for the increase in public spending on housing benefit.
Mention has been made of Chesterfield. There are 12,000 households on housing benefits in Chesterfield and 6,000 in receipt of supplementary benefit. Thirteen out of every 100 people are unemployed, and chasing 250 vacant jobs. People in Chesterfield and throughout Britain will be worse off if the housing benefit is cut, as proposed by the Government, in April, November and April next year. The Government are directly responsible for those cuts, which are unnecessary and immoral when compared to the eagerness with which the Government are increasing public subsidies to well-off owner-occupiers in mortgage tax relief. We have heard that for people on £30,000 a year there is a subsidy of £22 a week. The top 1 per cent. have enjoyed handsome tax cuts from the Government. We know that under the Government there has been some boom in the creation of millionaires. There are now 1,200 millionaires in Britain, an increase of well over 1,000 since the Government came into power.
Whatever changes are now made, there must be a considerable doubt about whether local authorities can introduce any changes whatever by April without further intensifying the human distress and administrative chaos which has already characterised the introduction of the housing benefit scheme as we have heard so often throughout the debate tonight.
Cuts in housing benefit are unacceptable and unnecessary, especially when they are compared with the increasing help that is being given to well-off owner-occupiers. They are unnecessary and unacceptable because they hit the working poor exceptionally hard. They are unacceptable because they deepen the poverty trap and inevitably these cuts—any cuts introduced at this stage—will cause further distress and administrative chaos. We are talking about the people that my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr. Rooker) spoke about. They are the people who wake up in the morning to find letters demanding huge amounts of money. That causes great distress and worry to many elderly people in particular. The House should recognise that. When those Conservative Members who have had deep and sincere doubts about the wisdom of introducing any cuts at all in housing benefit consider their positions tonight I hope that they will have the integrity and belief in their principles to join us in the Lobbies tonight in voting against the regulations.
The only reasonable way for the Government to have responded to the surge of opposition that there has been to cuts and proposed cuts in housing benefits would have been to withdraw them, certainly pending the comprehensive review of the housing benefits scheme that the Government have announced. That review has only come as a result of the pressure that we have heard tonight from Conservative Members and from the demands of Labour Members over recent months when we have discussed housing benefits on innumerable occasions. If that review is to be soundly based and to command public respect, and if the people serving on the committee are to have a real confidence that they are making a major contribution to resolving one of the biggest blunders ever introduced by any Administration in Britain in living memory, the Government should allow the review to do its work. They should have deferred the proposed cuts that they are now urging us to support and allowed the committee to come forward with I hope proposals to remove many of the administrative problems that exist in housing benefits.
This is not even a banana skin. We cannot even see the hand of the Foreign Secretary behind the problems of the housing benefit scheme. We have heard tonight that certain Conservative Members seem to be able to sell their principles for half the cost of a Kit-Kat, not even the £1,000 that the Foreign Secretary has asked trade unionists to sell their principles for. However, I have greater respect for Conservative Members. I do not think that they can be bought off for half the price of a Kit-Kat and I hope that they will vote according to their consciences.
By rushing through these cuts in the way that they are, the Government are casting great doubt on the genuineness of the review that they are initiating. The Minister said that the cost of the housing benefit scheme cuts will have to be met by what he called "off-setting measures". In this age of creative accountancy we are used to such jargon, but we want to know what such off-setting measures will mean to the DHSS budget. We know that the Department must find about £35 million. I hope that when he replies the Minister will tell us what proportion of that £35 million will come from the contingency fund and what proportion will come from the DHSS budget. We know that there are only three options. Whatever comes out of the DHSS budget means that something will be cut elsewhere, delayed or abolished entirely.
In view of the considerable public controversy that there has been about the housing benefit scheme, circulars have come out of the Elephant and Castle like confetti during the past 12 months, introducing amendment after amendment to local authorities. The Minister of State arid the Secretary of State have had meeting after meeting with their Back Benchers during the past few weeks. The Minister has been closeted with local authority representatives for weeks past. I gather that over Christmas he even read the book on housing benefit written by the director of SHAC. Such was his concern to get to grips with the complexities of the housing benefit scheme that he sacrificed a considerable part of his Christmas, reading about housing benefits. Bearing in mind the discussions that have taken place and the enormous amount of concern that exists among people who will be hit by these proposals, if they are implemented, the Minister of State should tell the House where the money is coming from, and how much will come out of the DHSS budget.
The only course left to the Government, if they wish to demonstrate by their actions that they wish to respond to reasonable democratic pressure, and show that they are genuinely concerned about family poverty, is to withdraw the regulations. If, despite all opposition, they press on and try to push the changes through by April, bringing the other changes in November, and further changes in April, it will be another indictment of this mean and nasty, Government, who are again forcing poor people to pay for more help for the rich in this country.
May I quote from the weekend speech by the Secretary of State for Defence. It was headlined in The Sunday Times:
Heseltine goes for hearts and minds.
He told the young Conservatives:
We are seeking to build an entrepreneurial society in which the pursuit of profit is the fuel of the system and individual reward is the prime incentive.
The article went on:
But there was a third element in Tory attitudes—'that a civilised society depends upon the unavoidable and often welcome role of a sympathetic government'.


I believe that that is true. When one compares that fine rhetoric and those fine words with the gross unfairness of housing benefits, one does not find a marrying of minds. These cuts are avoidable, and they are being imposed by a most unsympathetic Government.
If the Minister of State wants to reassert his reputation as a man of principle, as a man of Thatcherite principle, he should disentangle himself from the biggest blunder that we have seen in the government of this country for many years. If he is not prepared to withdraw these proposals, I hope that he will shortly announce his resignation and disengage himself from the chaos and hardship that he is imposing on many people in this country—pensioners and the working poor, people who cannot bear those burdens. I hope that the Minister will withdraw the proposals tonight and say that he will allow the review to do its job and that, in the meantime, there will be no changes to this unloved and unlovely scheme.

The Minister for Social Security (Dr. Rhodes Boyson): I think this is the fourth debate that we have had on housing benefits in the past few months. The cast has changed from time to time. Some of the principals remain, but the numbers of hon. Members on the Opposition Benches remain static. The speech of the hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Meacher) would have been more effective if he had had more backing on the Benches behind him, for all the great indignation that he showed on that occasion. While we have been sitting here, some of us have missed the fact that the gold medal was won by Torvill and Dean tonight. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] Even housing benefits must be seen in perspective on these occasions.
I want to put the whole subject of housing benefits into perspective, on behalf of both sides of the House, including the hon. Member for Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley (Mr. Foulkes), who has now rejoined us. I should like to put in perspective the whole matter of social security spending by this Government. Opposition Hon. Members may not like it because we are spending money. Next year we shall be spending £37 billion on social security, 30 per cent. of Government expenditure and 25 per cent. more in real terms than when we came into office four and a half years ago. [Interruption.] There are more on the dole, but in purchasing power people who are on the dole are getting more money than they were four and a half years ago. Long-term supplementary benefit, which is now paid at the age of 60 years, is £54·55. If it had been indexed for inflation from the level at which we inherited it, it would be £51·70.

Mr. Dennis Skinner: Get on to housing benefit.

Dr. Boyson: I shall get on to housing benefit; I shall not be misled by the hon. Gentleman, who is a skilled performer in the House.
In real terms we are giving out more for nearly every benefit than we were when we came into office. Housing benefit is costing about £3·75 million, £4 per week in taxes for every household. It goes further up the income ladder than any other means-tested benefit. That is accepted on both sides of the House and certainly by the Social Security Advisory Committee.
My right hon. Friend referred to the big increase of 140 per cent. in real terms over the last 10 years in this expenditure. Paragraph 10 of the committee's report says clearly:
there are some aspects of the housing benefit scheme which extend financial help farther up the income ladder than anywhere else in the social security system, and that if cuts in social security spending are essential it might be reasonable to take resources from there rather than from—say—the means-tested safety-net benefits.
A household of a man, his wife and two children with an income of £170 per week, paying £25 per week in rent, can get help through housing benefit. A man and wife by themselves, without children, earning £160 a week, can receive housing benefit if they are paying £10 per week in rates; again that is for two people above the average income. Similarly, a man with £100 per week, with two sons aged 16 and 17 on average income, with a total income of £220 per week, gets a £4·65 rebate on rent and rates of £28 per week. My hon. Friends know these figures; they are very knowledgeable about housing benefits.
Because the benefits are at this level, when we had to consider the continuing increase in social security expenditure, we naturally examined this area.

Mr. Foulkes: Answer the debate.

Dr. Boyson: I am answering the debate.
Since we made our suggestions on 17 November last, we have listened to the Social Security Advisory Committee, to my right hon. and hon. Friends, to the local authorities, to the citizens advice bureaux and even to Opposition hon. Members when they have said more sensible things than they do at times. It is because we have listened that we have made the amendments which are being debated in the regulations and orders. No householder on supplementary benefit need be affected. People below the needs allowance will be unaffected apart from a few paying higher rents in November.
We shall have to consider whether capping is necessary in November. That is why we were able to give the figures for the losses in April, but not for the losses in November.
As regards the tapers, instead of going up to 31 per cent. in April the rent taper will go up to 26 per cent. The rates taper will increase from 7 per cent. to 9 per cent. In April, we will also increase the deductions for non-dependant 18-year-olds, 19-year-olds and those aged 20 plus. None of my hon. Friend object to that increase.

Mr. Field: They should do.

Dr. Boyson: Why should my hon. Friends object? The hon. Gentleman is trying to distract me from the main theme of the debate. The average wage of 18-year-olds and 19-year-olds is £95 per week for males and £78 per week for females. Surely they can afford to put £8·20 into the family kitty. Are they to be freeloaders for ever more, as some Opposition Members might desire?

Mr. Foulkes: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Dr. Boyson: I shall give way to the hon. Gentleman in a minute, as I always enjoy being in the Chamber with him. To ensure that he is in the Chamber next time I speak, I shall give way shortly.
If people are on unemployment or sickness benefit we shall, as the Social Security Advisory Committee


recommended, alter the number of days after which the deductions can be modified from 90 to 56 and backdate the provision to the day of application.
As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said, we met the leaders of the local authorities as soon as we had laid the regulations. They agreed that they could implement them. If the Government want to know whether local authorities can do their job, we do not usually ask the Opposition Front Bench; we ask the local authorities, and that is what consultation is all about. The leaders of the local authorities said that they could implement the regulations. In one case, it was said that local authorities might have difficulty. We said, "Ring us up tomorrow." One could not be fairer than that. My right hon. Friend and I are most reasonable men.
It was the district councils that said that it might be difficult. We should be clear about that, because the full story must be told. Nothing must be withheld. When we asked the local authorities about the minor alterations which they had wanted, all but the district councils said that they could implement the regulations, including the Scottish representative who had flown down specially from Scotland. The hon. Member for Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley will be very interested in that. If Scotland can do it—and no doubt the authorities will do it well—it can no doubt be done elsewhere.
There are 576 district councils. I was astonished by the number. I—like, no doubt, my right hon. and hon. Friends—did not realise how many there were. Their representative said that he would have to ring every one of them the next day. He rang them, and the next evening he came back and said that it could be done. Therefore, there is no question of difficulty in applying these regulations. The authorities have made it perfectly clear that they could do it.
New programmes will not be required. The parameters of any computer programmes that already exist will just have to be changed.

Mr. Field: rose—

Dr. Boyson: I must not give way to the hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field). Let us have first the intervention from the hon. Member for Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley.

Mr. Foulkes: I regret that such an important debate should be developing into a farce because of the nature of the Minster's reply. Earlier, the Minister was talking about non-dependent relatives. I wanted to ask him to answer the point that I made to the Secretary of State about the position of non-dependent relatives who are employed part-time. So far, there has been no reply to that point. The way that the Minister is going, he will not reply to any of the points that have been made.

Dr. Boyson: By sheer chance, I have the letter that the hon. Gentleman wrote to the Department. It just happens to be on top of my pile. It refers to somebody with a 21-year-old son who works only 18 hours a week on an MSC course and receives £41 per week gross. We were asked whether he had to pay the full amount. The answer is that he does. There is no way of carrying out means tests for such a small number. I know that the hon. Gentleman will be disappointed—but he will at least be delighted that my Department has replied so quickly.
It is as well to remind the House that two thirds of those receiving housing benefit will be unaffected by what we

are doing at Easter. The average loss is only 69p, and for pensioners only 56p. Moreover, 51 per cent. of claimants and 59 per cent. of pensioners who are affected by the taper change will lose less than 50p a week, and 78 per cent. of claimants and 85 per cent. of pensioners will lose less than £1 per week.
My hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Dr. Mawhinney) asked about those losing more than £2. Fewer than 2 per cent. of those receiving housing benefit will lose more than £2 per week. Some 120,000 householders will lose, including 50,000 pensioners. My hon. Friend also asked what kind of income was coming in so that one knew where the money was lost. It is not possible to break down the figures absolutely, but, of those concerned, 10,000 have incomes between £25 and £30 above the needs allowance, 70,000 have incomes between £30 and £40 above the needs allowance, and the remainder have an income that is more than £40 above the needs allowance. Nobody can say that we are clawing back money from those receiving the least in our society. Nobody enjoys having to claw back, but where one has to we have made sure that those from the lower income sectors of the population are those who suffer the least.

Dr. Mawhinney: I am grateful to my hon. Friend both for the substance and the speed of the reply. Would not the Opposition Front Bench's case have been more credible if it had related the clawback, as my hon. Friend has called it, to the income that the families were receiving? We can now see that it is not a significant percentage of the income.

Dr. Boyson: I am grateful for my hon. Friend's comment. I know that he is concerned about this, because we have talked about it.
In November the Social Security Advisory Committee suggested that those who were below the needs allowance should not be affected by an increase in the minimum amounts; that these should remain at 10p and 20p and not go up to the figures suggested. Again, the people below the means allowance will not now be affected. The SSAC recommended, as did the local authorities, that in some cases the minimum should go up, but it will only go up to 50p for rent cases, not to £1 as was originally intended.
I have a list, which I do not have the time to go through, which shows that about 11 of the recommendations made by the SSAC have been accepted by us in half or in full. In other words, nobody can say that we are not ready to listen, that we have not read the report or have not applied it within the constraint of knowing that money does not grow on trees and that we need to control the level of expenditure on housing benefit as we do the rest of Government expenditure.
In November the 16 to 17-year-olds will be expected to contribute £3·10 out of an average wage of £61 for males and £56 for females if they are not at school, on YTS, supplementary benefit or non-contributory invalidity pension—for it was recommended that these should be exempt, and we accepted that. That seems to be reasonable.
The high rent changes have been put off until November because they are difficult to operate, and the rent taper will then go up to 29 per cent. I remind the House that two thirds of those receiving housing benefits, including two thirds of pensioners, will not be affected by the changes in November, any more than they will be


affected by the changes at Easter. We have said, as we said to the local authorities when we met them a week ago today, that if we can find some method of capping the accumulated losses from the various tributaries in November, we shall do so. We shall look at this and be delighted to take advice from local authorities or from any hon. Member.

Mr. Meacher: As the Minister knows, 50,000 pensioners will lose between £2 and £3 a week. What justification can he give for chopping their benefit back at all, when those earning over £30,000 receive £22 a week in mortgage interest tax relief? What justification is there for pensioners or families in poverty having such a cut in those circumstances?

Dr. Boyson: Mortgage relief has already been mentioned, and I imagine that many hon. Members are affected by it. One fact does not seem to have been mentioned. Last year we increased from £25,000 to £30,000 the level of mortgage relief. If my memory serves me correctly—and I stand to be corrected on this—the last time there was an increase in mortgage relief from £20,000 to £25,000, it was done by a Labour Government in 1974. [Interruption.] I would like that to be checked tomorrow. At that time, the Labour party was holding a different view on mortgage relief from its present view.
As to the amount of the relief, the Government obviously do not enjoy limiting the amount of housing help made available to people. Of the £45 million cuts in the cuts, if I may put it that way, £23 million will go to pensioners, so there is no doubt that we have put the priority where both sides of the House would like it to be, that is, in helping the pensioner as much as we can in what we are doing.
I deal next with the review, which was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Bury, North (Mr. Burt), my hon. Friend the Member for Saffron Walden (Mr. Haselhurst), my hon. Friend the Member for Bury, South (Mr. Sumberg), my hon. Friend the Member for Gillingham (Mr. Couchman), my hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire, South (Mrs. Currie) and other hon. Members. We have stated that there will be a review of the size, shape and scope of the scheme. We have said that there will be an external chairman. We have gone no further than that, because we put the proposal before the House only last week. The review will take evidence, possibly oral and certainly written. The review will have to take evidence from local authorities and people who have information on the matter. We have said that the review is to examine the structure and scope of the scheme to ensure that it is as simple as possible, and that help is concentrated on those most in need. The aim is to improve its administration by local authorities. The team will be a small one, with an independent chairman reporting directly to the Secretary of State.

Mr. Lofthouse: rose—

Dr. Boyson: I shall not give way. I must finish this point to put at rest the minds of my hon. Friends and, I trust, the minds of some Opposition Members. We came to an agreement, and, on this side of the House, we stand by agreements.

Mr. Kirkwood: rose—

Dr. Boyson: I am not giving way. Although we have not finally decided, we are considering the publication of the report, because I know that hon. Members will make that request.

Mr. Kirkwood: Will the Minister say whether the review will undertake a thorough investigation of the administrative costs of the scheme, including the modified alterations?

Dr. Boyson: The answer is yes. The administration of the scheme will be similarly investigated.
An attempt has been made by certain Labour authorities to milk the housing benefit scheme and to put in a differential rent scheme so that the money they get back through Government is put at a higher level, and the money that the local authorities expend is put at a lower level.

Mr. Lofthouse: rose—

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order.

Dr. Boyson: We do not believe that Government money which goes to people for housing benefits should be used to inflate costs or should be given back in rate rebates. By all means, let there be rent-free—

Mr. Lofthouse: Before the Minister forgets, will he answer the question? If local authorities go into penalties arising from the housing benefit scheme, will they be protected?

Dr. Boyson: Sixty per cent. of the grant is direct grant, and it more than covers the expenditure for 80 per cent. of local authorities. I have met the local authorities to discuss this. They stated what would happen in such a case, and there are two answers. One is that local authorities do not go into penalties just by the amount that is spent on housing benefits in this way. Local authorities must already have been considerably overspending. I believe that there is a method by which a local authority can appeal if it thinks that it has a right for the penalty not to be applied. I shall write to the hon. Member giving the full details of what was said when I met the local authorities, and put his mind at rest.

Mr. Madden: rose—

Dr. Boyson: I shall give way for the last time.

Mr. Madden: In the time remaining, can the Minister of State answer one of the questions that have been put to him? I and other hon. Members asked where the money that has to be saved will come from, how much will come from the contingency fund, and how much will come from the DHSS budget.

Dr. Boyson: My right hon. Friend said earlier that it would be a mixture of the contingency fund and the DHSS budget. As Opposition Members have reminded us frequently this evening, the Department's budget is £37 billion. We must consider the entire budget over a period before we decide. That was an idea that we got from Opposition Members, which we have taken on board completely.
The Government's priorities have been the protection of the poorest, those on the lowest incomes and pensioners—[Interruption.] Yes, they are. Are we not protecting those drawing supplementary benefit? Are we not protecting those earning below the needs allowance? The Opposition have a strange idea about poverty. We have


looked after those on supplementary benefit and those who earn below the needs allowance. We have listened to local authorities, and in April we shall introduce provisions which they say they can administer. We have simplified administration, and I hope that the Opposition will not vote against that, because it was agreed by the local authorities. The Opposition had better examine all the measures before they decide on the ones against which they will vote. Perhaps they can ask us for advice.
The House must realise, as does the Conservative party, that if we continue to spend money like water it will mean either higher taxes and the destruction of incentives, or inflation. During the Labour Government there was 110 per cent. inflation, which destroyed the value of occupational pensions and the purchasing power of those on fixed incomes.
I ask my right hon. and hon. Friends, and any Opposition Members who wish to join us, to vote for the regulations.

Question put:—

The House divided:—Ayes 350, Noes 209.

Division No. 163]
[10.0 pm


AYES


Adley, Robert
Chapman, Sydney


Aitken, Jonathan
Chope, Christopher


Alexander, Richard
Churchill, W. S.


Alison, Rt Hon Michael
Clark, Hon A. (Plym'th S'n)


Amess, David
Clark, Dr Michael (Rochford)


Ancram, Michael
Clark, Sir W. (Croydon S)


Arnold, Tom
Clarke, Kenneth (Sutcliffe)


Ashby, David
Clegg, Sir Walter


Aspinwall, Jack
Cockeram, Eric


Atkins, Rt Hon Sir H.
Colvin, Michael


Atkins, Robert (South Ribble)
Conway, Derek


Atkinson, David (B'm'th E)
Coombs, Simon


Baker, Kenneth (Mole Valley)
Cope, John


Baker, Nicholas (N Dorset)
Cormack, Patrick


Baldry, Anthony
Corrie, John


Batiste, Spencer
Couchman, James


Beaumont-Dark, Anthony
Cranborne, Viscount


Bellingham, Henry
Crouch, David


Bendall, Vivian
Currie, Mrs Edwina


Bennett, Sir Frederic (T'bay)
Dickens, Geoffrey


Benyon, William
Dicks, Terry


Berry, Sir Anthony
Dorrell, Stephen


Best, Keith
Douglas-Hamilton, Lord J.


Bevan, David Gilroy
Dover, Den


Biffen, Rt Hon John
du Cann, Rt Hon Edward


Biggs-Davison, Sir John
Dunn, Robert


Blaker, Rt Hon Sir Peter
Durant, Tony


Body, Richard
Edwards, Rt Hon N. (P'broke)


Bonsor, Sir Nicholas
Eggar, Tim


Bottomley, Peter
Evennett, David


Bowden, A. (Brighton K'to'n)
Eyre, Sir Reginald


Bowden, Gerald (Dulwich)
Fairbairn, Nicholas


Boyson, Dr Rhodes
Fallon, Michael


Brandon-Bravo, Martin
Farr, John


Bright, Graham
Favell, Anthony


Brinton, Tim
Fenner, Mrs Peggy


Brittan, Rt Hon Leon
Finsberg, Sir Geoffrey


Brooke, Hon Peter
Fletcher, Alexander


Brown, M. (Brigg &amp; Cl'thpes)
Fookes, Miss Janet


Browne, John
Forman, Nigel


Bruinvels, Peter
Forsyth, Michael (Stirling)


Bryan, Sir Paul
Forth, Eric


Buck, Sir Antony
Fowler, Rt Hon Norman


Budgen, Nick
Fox, Marcus


Bulmer, Esmond
Franks, Cecil


Butcher, John
Fraser, Peter (Angus East)


Butler, Hon Adam
Freeman, Roger


Butterfill, John
Fry, Peter


Carlisle, John (N Luton)
Gale, Roger


Carlisle, Kenneth (Lincoln)
Galley, Roy


Carttiss, Michael
Gardiner, George (Reigate)


Chalker, Mrs Lynda
Garel-Jones, Tristan


Channon, Rt Hon Paul
Gilmour, Rt Hon Sir Ian





Glyn, Dr Alan
Lyell, Nicholas


Goodhart, Sir Philip
McCurley, Mrs Anna


Goodlad, Alastair
Macfarlane, Neil


Gorst, John
MacGregor, John


Gower, Sir Raymond
MacKay, Andrew (Berkshire)


Greenway, Harry
MacKay, John (Argyll &amp; Bute)


Gregory, Conal
Maclean, David John.


Griffiths, E. (B'y St Edm'ds)
McNair-Wilson, P. (New F'st)


Griffiths, Peter (Portsm'th N)
McQuarrie, Albert


Grist, Ian
Madel, David


Ground, Patrick
Major, John


Grylls, Michael
Malins, Humfrey


Gummer, John Selwyn
Malone, Gerald


Hamilton, Hon A. (Epsom)
Maples, John


Hamilton, Neil (Tatton)
Marland, Paul


Hampson, Dr Keith
Marlow, Antony


Hanley, Jeremy
Marshall, Michael (Arundel)


Hannam, John
Mates, Michael


Harris, David
Maude, Francis


Harvey, Robert
Mawhinney, Dr Brian


Haselhurst, Alan
Maxwell-Hyslop, Robin


Havers, Rt Hon Sir Michael
Mayhew, Sir Patrick


Hawkins, C. (High Peak)
Mellor, David


Hawkins, Sir Paul (SW N'folk)
Merchant, Piers


Hawksley, Warren
Meyer, Sir Anthony


Hayes, J.
Miller, Hal (B'grove)


Hayhoe, Barney
Mills, Iain (Meriden)


Hayward, Robert
Mills, Sir Peter (West Devon)


Heathcoat-Amory, David
Miscampbell, Norman


Heddle, John
Mitchell, David (NW Hants)


Henderson, Barry
Moate, Roger


Hickmet, Richard
Monro, Sir Hector


Higgins, Rt Hon Terence L.
Moore, John


Hill, James
Morris, M. (N'hampton, S)


Hind, Kenneth
Morrison, Hon C. (Devizes)


Hirst, Michael
Morrison, Hon P. (Chester)


Hogg, Hon Douglas (Gr'th'm)
Moynihan, Hon C.


Holland, Sir Philip (Gedling)
Mudd, David


Holt, Richard
Murphy, Christopher


Hooson, Tom
Neale, Gerrard


Hordern, Peter
Needham, Richard


Howarth, Alan (Stratf'd-on-A)
Nelson, Anthony


Howarth, Gerald (Cannock)
Neubert, Michael


Howell, Rt Hon D. (G'Idford)
Newton, Tony


Howell, Ralph (N Norfolk)
Nicholls, Patrick


Hubbard-Miles, Peter
Normanton, Tom


Hunt, David (Wirral)
Norris, Steven


Hunt, John (Ravensbourne)
Onslow, Cranley


Hunter, Andrew
Oppenheim, Philip


Hurd, Rt Hon Douglas
Oppenheim, Rt Hon Mrs S.


Irving, Charles
Osborn, Sir John


Jackson, Robert
Ottaway, Richard


Jenkin, Rt Hon Patrick
Page, John (Harrow W)


Jessel, Toby
Parkinson, Rt Hon Cecil


Johnson-Smith, Sir Geoffrey
Parris, Matthew


Jones, Gwilym (Cardiff N)
Patten, Christopher (Bath)


Jones, Robert (W Herts)
Patten, John (Oxford)


Joseph, Rt Hon Sir Keith
Pattie, Geoffrey


Kellett-Bowman, Mrs Elaine
Pawsey, James


Kershaw, Sir Anthony
Percival, Rt Hon Sir Ian


Key, Robert
Pink, R. Bonner


King, Roger (B'ham N'field)
Pollock, Alexander


Knight, Gregory (Derby N)
Porter, Barry


Knight, Mrs Jill (Edgbaston)
Powell, William (Corby)


Knowles, Michael
Powley, John


Knox, David
Prentice, Rt Hon Reg


Lamont, Norman
Price, Sir David


Lang, Ian
Prior, Rt Hon James


Latham, Michael
Proctor, K. Harvey


Lawler, Geoffrey
Pym, Rt Hon Francis


Lawrence, Ivan
Raffan, Keith


Lawson, Rt Hon Nigel
Raison, Rt Hon Timothy


Lee, John (Pendle)
Rathbone, Tim


Leigh, Edward (Gainsbor'gh)
Flenton, Tim


Lennox-Boyd, Hon Mark
Flhodes James, Robert


Lewis, Sir Kenneth (Stamf'd)
Ridley, Rt Hon Nicholas


Lightbown, David
Ridsdale, Sir Julian


Lloyd, Ian (Havant)
Rippon, Rt Hon Geoffrey


Lloyd, Peter, (Fareham)
Roberts, Wyn (Conwy)


Lord, Michael
Robinson, Mark (N'port W)






Roe, Mrs Marion
Thomas, Rt Hon Peter


Rossi, Sir Hugh
Thompson, Donald (Calder V)


Rost, Peter
Thompson, Patrick (N'ich N)


Rowe, Andrew
Thorne, Neil (Ilford S)


Rumbold, Mrs Angela
Thornton, Malcolm


Ryder, Richard
Thurnham, Peter


Sackville, Hon Thomas
Townend, John (Bridlington)


Sainsbury, Hon Timothy
Townsend, Cyril D. (B'heath)


St. John-Stevas, Rt Hon N.
Tracey, Richard


Sayeed, Jonathan
Trippier, David


Scott, Nicholas
Trotter, Neville


Shaw, Giles (Pudsey)
Twinn, Dr Ian


Shaw, Sir Michael (Scarb')
van Straubenzee, Sir W.


Shelton, William (Streatham)
Vaughan, Sir Gerard


Shepherd, Colin (Hereford)
Viggers, Peter


Shepherd, Richard (Aldridge)
Waddington, David


Shersby, Michael
Wakeham, Rt Hon John


Silvester, Fred
Waldegrave, Hon William


Sims, Roger
Walden, George


Skeet, T. H. H.
Walker, Bill (T'side N)


Smith, Tim (Beaconsfield)
Wall, Sir Patrick


Soames, Hon Nicholas
Waller, Gary


Speed, Keith
Walters, Dennis


Spence, John
Ward, John


Spencer, D.
Wardle, C. (Bexhill)


Spicer, Jim (W Dorset)
Warren, Kenneth


Spicer, Michael (S Worcs)
Watson, John


Squire, Robin
Watts, John


Stanley, John
Wells, Bowen (Hertford)


Steen, Anthony
Wells, John (Maidstone)


Stern, Michael
Whitfield, John


Stevens, Lewis (Nuneaton)
Whitney, Raymond


Stevens, Martin (Fulham)
Wiggin, Jerry


Stewart, Allan (Eastwood)
Winterton, Mrs Ann


Stewart, Andrew (Sherwood)
Winterton, Nicholas


Stewart, Ian (N Hertf'dshire)
Wolfson, Mark


Stradling Thomas, J.
Wood, Timothy


Sumberg, David
Woodcock, Michael


Tapsell, Peter
Yeo, Tim


Taylor, John (Solihull)
Young, Sir George (Acton)


Taylor, Teddy (S'end E)



Tebbit, Rt Hon Norman
Tellers for the Ayes:


Temple-Morris, Peter
Mr. Carol Mather and


Terlezki, Stefan
Mr. Robert Boscawen.




NOES


Adams, Allen (Paisley N)
Clay, Robert


Alton, David
Cocks, Rt Hon M. (Bristol S.)


Anderson, Donald
Cohen, Harry


Archer, Rt Hon Peter
Coleman, Donald


Ashdown, Paddy
Concannon, Rt Hon L.D.


Ashley, Rt Hon Peter
Conlan, Bernard


Ashton, Joe
Cook, Frank (Stockton North)


Atkinson, N. (Tottenham)
Cook, Robin F. (Livingston)


Bagier, Gordon A. T.
Corbett, Robin


Banks, Tony (Newham NW)
Corbyn, Jeremy


Barnett, Guy
Cowans, Harry


Beckett, Mrs Margaret
Craigen, J. M.


Beggs, Roy
Crowther, Stan


Beith, A. J.
Cunningham, Dr John


Bell, Stuart
Davies, Rt Hon Denzil (L'lli)


Bennett, A. (Dent'n &amp; Red'sh)
Davies, Ronald (Caerphilly)


Bermingham, Gerald
Davis, Terry (B'ham, H'ge H'l)


Bidwell, Sydney
Deakins, Eric


Blair, Anthony
Dewar, Donald


Boyes, Roland
Dixon, Donald


Bray, Dr Jeremy
Dobson, Frank


Brown, Gordon (D'f'mline E)
Dormand, Jack


Brown, Hugh D. (Provan)
Douglas, Dick


Brown, N. (N'c'tle-u-Tyne E)
Dubs, Alfred


Bruce, Malcolm
Duffy, A. E. P.


Buchan, Norman
Dunwoody, Hon Mrs G.


Callaghan, Jim (Heyw'd &amp; M)
Eadie, Alex


Campbell, Ian
Eastham, Ken


Campbell-Savours, Dale
Ellis, Raymond


Canavan, Dennis
Evans, John (St. Helens N)


Carlile, Alexander (Montg'y)
Fatchett, Derek


Carter-Jones, Lewis
Field, Frank (Birkenhead)


Cartwright, John
Fields, T. (L'pool Broad Gn)


Clark, Dr David (S Shields)
Fisher, Mark





Flannery, Martin
Mitchell, Austin (G't Grimsby)


Foot, Rt Hon Michael
Molyneaux, Rt Hon James


Forrester, John
Morris, Rt Hon A. (W'shawe)


Foster, Derek
Morris, Rt Hon J. (Aberavon)


Foulkes, George
Nellist, David


Fraser, J. (Norwood)
Nicholson, J.


Freeson, Rt Hon Reginald
Oakes, Rt Hon Gordon


Freud, Clement
O'Brien, William


Garrett, W. E.
Park, George


George, Bruce
Parry, Robert


Gilbert, Rt Hon Dr John
Patchett, Terry


Godman, Dr Norman
Pavitt, Laurie


Golding, John
Peacock, Mrs Elizabeth


Gould, Bryan
Penhaligon, David


Gourlay, Harry
Pike, Peter


Hamilton, W. W. (Central Fife)
Powell, Rt Hon J. E. (S Down)


Hardy, Peter
Powell, Raymond (Ogmore)


Harman, Ms Harriet
Prescott, John


Harrison, Rt Hon Walter
Radice, Giles


Hart, Rt Hon Dame Judith
Randall, Stuart


Hattersley, Rt Hon Roy
Redmond, M.


Haynes, Frank
Rees, Rt Hon M. (Leeds S)


Heffer, Eric S.
Richardson, Ms Jo


Hogg, N. (C'nauld &amp; Kilsyth)
Roberts, Allan (Bootle)


Holland, Stuart (Vauxhall)
Roberts, Ernest (Hackney N)


Home Robertson, John
Robertson, George


Howell, Rt Hon D. (S'heath)
Robinson, G. (Coventry NW)


Howells, Geraint
Rooker, J. W.


Hoyle, Douglas
Ross, Ernest (Dundee W)


Hughes, Dr. Mark (Durham)
Ross, Wm. (Londonderry)


Hughes, Robert (Aberdeen N)
Rowlands, Ted


Hughes, Roy (Newport East)
Ryman, John


Hughes, Sean (Knowsley S)
Sedgemore, Brian


Hughes, Simon (Southwark)
Sheerman, Barry


Janner, Hon Greville
Sheldon, Rt Hon R.


Jenkins, Rt Hon Roy (Hillh'd)
Short, Mrs R. (W'hampt'n NE)


John, Brynmor
Silkin, Rt Hon J.


Johnston, Russell
Skinner, Dennis


Jones, Barry (Alyn &amp; Deeside)
Smith, C.(Isl'ton S &amp; F'bury)


Kaufman, Rt Hon Gerald
Smith, Rt Hon J. (M'kl'ds E)


Kennedy, Charles
Smyth, Rev W. M. (Belfast S)


Kilroy-Silk, Robert
Snape, Peter


Kirkwood, Archibald
Soley, Clive


Lambie, David
Spearing, Nigel


Lamond, James
Stewart, Rt Hon D. (W Isles)


Leadbitter, Ted
Stott, Roger


Leighton, Ronald
Strang, Gavin


Lewis, Ron (Carlisle)
Straw, Jack


Lewis, Terence (Worsley)
Thomas, Dafydd (Merioneth)


Litherland, Robert
Thomas, Dr R. (Carmarthen)


Lloyd, Tony (Stretford)
Thompson, J. (Wansbeck)


Lofthouse, Geoffrey
Thorne, Stan (Preston)


Loyden, Edward
Tinn, James


McCartney, Hugh
Torney, Tom


McCusker, Harold
Walker, Cecil (Belfast N)


McDonald, Dr Oonagh
Wallace, James


McGuire, Michael
Warden, Gareth (Gower)


McKay, Allen (Penistone)
Wareing, Robert


McKelvey, William
Weetch, Ken


McNamara, Kevin
Welsh, Michael


McTaggart, Robert
White, James


Madden, Max
Wigley, Dafydd


Maginnis, Ken
Williams, Rt Hon A.


Marek, Dr John
Wilson, Gordon


Marshall, David (Shettleston)
Winnick, David


Martin, Michael
Woodall, Alec


Mason, Rt Hon Roy
Wrigglesworth, Ian


Maxton, John
Young, David (Bolton SE)


Meacher, Michael



Meadowcroft, Michael
Tellers for the Noes:


Michie, William
Mr. James Hamilton and


Mikardo, Ian
Mr. John McWilliam


Millan, Rt Hon Bruce

Question accordingly agreed to.

Resolved,
That the draft Supplementary Benefit (Requirements) Amendment Regulations 1984, which were laid before this House on 6th February, be approved.

Motion made, and Question proposed,
That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, praying that the Housing Benefits Amendment Regulations 1984 (S.I. 1984, No. 103), dated 6th February 1984, a copy of which was laid before this House on 6th February, be annulled.—[Mr. Meacher]

Question put:—

The House divided: Ayes 210, Noes 345.

Division No. 164]
[10.15 pm


AYES


Adams, Allen (Paisley N)
Fisher, Mark


Alton, David
Flannery, Martin


Anderson, Donald
Foot, Rt Hon Michael


Archer, Rt Hon Peter
Forrester, John


Ashdown, Paddy
Foster, Derek


Ashley, Rt Hon Jack
Foulkes, George


Ashton, Joe
Fraser, J. (Norwood)


Atkinson, N. (Tottenham)
Freeson, Rt Hon Reginald


Bagier, Gordon A. T.
Freud, Clement


Banks, Tony (Newham NW)
Garrett, W. E.


Barnett, Guy
George, Bruce


Beckett, Mrs Margaret
Gilbert, Rt Hon Dr John


Beggs, Roy
Godman, Dr Norman


Beith, A. J.
Golding, John


Bell, Stuart
Gould, Bryan


Bennett, A. (Dent'n &amp; Red'sh)
Gourlay, Harry


Bermingham, Gerald
Hamilton, W. W. (Central Fife)


Bidwell, Sydney
Hardy, Peter


Blair, Anthony
Harman, Ms Harriet


Bowden, A. (Brighton K'to'n)
Harrison, Rt Hon Walter


Boyes, Roland
Hart, Rt Hon Dame Judith


Bray, Dr Jeremy
Hattersley, Rt Hon Roy


Brown, Gordon (D'f'mline E)
Haynes, Frank


Brown, Hugh D. (Provan)
Heffer, Eric S.


Brown, N. (N'c'tle-u-Tyne E)
Hogg, N. (C'nauld &amp; Kilsyth)


Bruce, Malcolm
Holland, Stuart (Vauxhall)


Buchan, Norman
Home Robertson, John


Callaghan, Jim (Heyw'd &amp; M)
Howell, Rt Hon D. (S'heath)


Campbell-Savours, Dale
Howells, Geraint


Canavan, Dennis
Hoyle, Douglas


Carlile, Alexander (Montg'y)
Hughes, Dr. Mark (Durham)


Carter-Jones, Lewis
Hughes, Robert (Aberdeen N)


Cartwright, John
Hughes, Roy (Newport East)


Clark, Dr David (S Shields)
Hughes, Sean (Knowsley S)


Clay, Robert
Hughes, Simon (Southwark)


Cocks, Rt Hon M. (Bristol S.)
Janner, Hon Greville


Cohen, Harry
Jenkins, Rt Hon Roy (Hillh'd)


Coleman, Donald
John, Brynmor


Concannon, Rt Hon J. D.
Johnston, Russell


Conlan, Bernard
Jones, Barry (Alyn &amp; Deeside)


Cook, Frank (Stockton North)
Kaufman, Rt Hon Gerald


Cook, Robin F. (Livingston)
Kennedy, Charles


Corbett, Robin
Kilroy-Silk, Robert


Corbyn, Jeremy
Kirkwood, Archibald


Cowans, Harry
Lambie, David


Craigen, J. M.
Lamond, James


Crowther, Stan
Leadbitter, Ted


Cunningham, Dr John
Leighton, Ronald


Dalyell, Tam
Lewis, Ron (Carlisle)


Davies, Rt Hon Denzil (L'lli)
Lewis, Terence (Worsley)


Davies, Ronald (Caerphilly)
Litherland, Robert


Davis, Terry (B'ham, H'ge H'l)
Lloyd, Tony (Stretford)


Deakins, Eric
Lofthouse, Geoffrey


Dewar, Donald
Loyden, Edward


Dixon, Donald
McCartney, Hugh


Dobson, Frank
McCusker, Harold


Dormand, Jack
McDonald, Dr Oonagh


Douglas, Dick
McGuire, Michael


Dubs, Alfred
McKay, Allen (Penistone)


Duffy, A. E. P.
McKelvey, William


Dunwoody, Hon Mrs G.
McNamara, Kevin


Eadie, Alex
McTaggart, Robert


Eastham, Ken
Madden, Max


Ellis, Raymond
Maginnis, Ken


Evans, John (St. Helens N)
Marek, Dr John


Fatchett, Derek
Marshall, David (Shettleston)


Field, Frank (Birkenhead)
Martin, Michael


Fields, T. (L'pool Broad Gn)
Mason, Rt Hon Roy





Maxton, John
Sheerman, Barry


Meacher, Michael
Sheldon, Rt Hon R.


Meadowcroft, Michael
Short, Mrs R. (W'hampt'n NE)


Michie, William
Silkin, Rt Hon J.


Mikardo, Ian
Skinner, Dennis


Millan, Rt Hon Bruce
Smith, C. (Isl'ton S &amp; F'bury)


Mitchell, Austin (G't Grimsby)
Smith, Rt Hon J. (M'kl'ds E)


Molyneaux, Rt Hon James
Smyth, Rev W. M. (Belfast S)


Morris, Rt Hon A. (W'shawe)
Snape, Peter


Morris, Rt Hon J. (Aberavon)
Soley, Clive


Nellist, David
Spearing, Nigel


Nicholson, J.
Stewart, Rt Hon D. (W Isles)


Oakes, Rt Hon Gordon
Stott, Roger


O'Brien, William
Strang, Gavin


Park, George
Straw, Jack


Parry, Robert
Thomas, Dafydd (Merioneth)


Patchett, Terry
Thomas, Dr R. (Carmarthen)


Pavitt, Laurie
Thompson, J. (Wansbeck)


Peacock, Mrs Elizabeth
Thorne, Stan (Preston)


Penhaligon, David
Tinn, James


Pike, Peter
Torney, Tom


Powell, Rt Hon J. E. (S Down)
Walker, Cecil (Belfast N)


Powell, Raymond (Ogmore)
Wallace, James


Prescott, John
Warden, Gareth (Gower)


Radice, Giles
Wareing, Robert


Randall, Stuart
Weetch, Ken


Redmond, M.
Welsh, Michael


Rees, Rt Hon M. (Leeds S)
White, James


Richardson, Ms Jo
Wigley, Dafydd


Roberts, Allan (Bootle)
Williams, Rt Hon A.


Roberts, Ernest (Hackney N)
Wilson, Gordon


Robertson, George
Winnick, David


Robinson, G. (Coventry NW)
Woodall, Alec


Rooker, J. W.
Wrigglesworth, Ian


Ross, Ernest (Dundee W)
Young, David (Bolton SE)


Ross, Wm. (Londonderry)



Rowlands, Ted
Tellers for the Ayes:


Ryman, John
Mr. James Hamilton and


Sedgemore, Brian
Mr. John McWilliam.




NOES


Adley, Robert
Bruinvels, Peter


Aitken, Jonathan
Bryan, Sir Paul


Alexander, Richard
Buck, Sir Antony


Alison, Rt Hon Michael
Budgen, Nick


Amess, David
Bulmer, Esmond


Ancram, Michael
Butcher, John


Arnold, Tom
Butler, Hon Adam


Ashby, David
Butterfill, John


Aspinwall, Jack
Carlisle, John (N Luton)


Atkins, Rt Hon Sir H.
Carlisle, Kenneth (Lincoln)


Atkins, Robert (South Ribble)
Carttiss, Michael


Atkinson, David (B'm'th E)
Chalker, Mrs Lynda


Baker, Kenneth (Mole Valley)
Channon, Rt Hon Paul


Baker, Nicholas (N Dorset)
Chapman, Sydney


Baldry, Anthony
Chope, Christopher


Batiste, Spencer
Churchill, W. S.


Beaumont-Dark, Anthony
Clark, Hon A. (Plym'th S'n)


Bellingham, Henry
Clark, Dr Michael (Rochford)


Bendall, Vivian
Clark, Sir W. (Croydon S)


Bennett, Sir Frederic (T'bay)
Clarke, Kenneth (Rushcliffe)


Benyon, William
Clegg, Sir Walter


Berry, Sir Anthony
Cockeram, Eric


Best, Keith
Colvin, Michael


Bevan, David Gilroy
Conway, Derek


Biffen, Rt Hon John
Coombs, Simon


Biggs-Davison, Sir John
Cope, John


Blaker, Rt Hon Sir Peter
Corrie, John


Body, Richard
Couchman, James


Bonsor, Sir Nicholas
Cranborne, Viscount


Bottomley, Peter
Crouch, David


Bowden, Gerald (Dulwich)
Currie, Mrs Edwina


Boyson, Dr Rhodes
Dickens, Geoffrey


Brandon-Bravo, Martin
Dicks, Terry


Bright, Graham
Dorrell, Stephen


Brinton, Tim
Douglas-Hamilton, Lord J.


Brittan, Rt Hon Leon
Dover, Den


Brooke, Hon Peter
du Cann, Rt Hon Edward


Brown, M. (Brigg &amp; Cl'thpes)
Dunn, Robert


Browne, John
Durant, Tony






Edwards, Rt Hon N. (P'broke)
Kershaw, Sir Anthony


Eggar, Tim
Key, Robert


Evennett, David
King, Roger (B'ham N'field)


Eyre, Sir Reginald
Knight, Gregory (Derby N)


Fairbaim, Nicholas
Knight, Mrs Jill (Edgbaston)


Fallon, Michael
Knowles, Michael


Farr, John
Knox, David


Favell, Anthony
Lamont, Norman


Fenner, Mrs Peggy
Lang, Ian


Finsberg, Sir Geoffrey
Latham, Michael


Fletcher, Alexander
Lawler, Geoffrey


Fookes, Miss Janet
Lawrence, Ivan


Forman, Nigel
Lawson, Rt Hon Nigel


Forsyth, Michael (Stirling)
Lee, John (Pendle)


Forth, Eric
Leigh, Edward (Gainsbor'gh)


Fowler, Rt Hon Norman
Lennox-Boyd, Hon Mark


Fox, Marcus
Lewis, Sir Kenneth (Stamf'd)


Franks, Cecil
Lightbown, David


Fraser, Peter (Angus East)
Lilley, Peter


Freeman, Roger
Lloyd, Ian (Havant)


Fry, Peter
Lloyd, Peter, (Fareham)


Galley, Roy
Lord, Michael


Gardiner, George (Reigate)
Lyell, Nicholas


Garel-Jones, Tristan
McCurley, Mrs Anna


Gilmour, Rt Hon Sir Ian
Macfarlane, Neil


Glyn, Dr Alan
MacGregor, John


Goodhart, Sir Philip
MacKay, Andrew (Berkshire)


Goodlad, Alastair
MacKay, John (Argyll &amp; Bute)


Gorst, John
Maclean, David John.


Gower, Sir Raymond
McNair-Wilson, P. (New F'st)


Gregory, Conal
McQuarrie, Albert


Griffiths, E. (B'y St Edm'ds)
Madel, David


Griffiths, Peter (Portsm'th N)
Major, John


Ground, Patrick
Malins, Humfrey


Grylls, Michael
Malone, Gerald


Gummer, John Selwyn
Maples, John


Hamilton, Hon A. (Epsom)
Marland, Paul


Hamilton, Neil (Tatton)
Marlow, Antony


Hampson, Dr Keith
Marshall, Michael (Arundel)


Hanley, Jeremy
Mates, Michael


Hannam,John
Maude, Francis


Harris, David
Mawhinney, Dr Brian


Harvey, Robert
Maxwell-Hyslop, Robin


Haselhurst, Alan
Mayhew, Sir Patrick


Havers, Rt Hon Sir Michael
Mellor, David


Hawkins, C. (High Peak)
Merchant, Piers


Hawkins, Sir Paul (SW N'folk)
Meyer, Sir Anthony


Hawksley, Warren
Miller, Hal (B'grove)


Hayhoe, Barney
Mills, Iain (Meriden)


Hayward, Robert
Mills, Sir Peter (West Devon)


Heathcoat-Amory, David
Miscampbell, Norman


Heddle, John
Mitchell, David (NW Hants)


Henderson, Barry
Moate, Roger


Hickmet, Richard
Monro, Sir Hector


Hill, James
Moore, John


Hind, Kenneth
Morris, M. (N'hampton, S)


Hirst, Michael
Morrison, Hon C. (Devizes)


Hogg, Hon Douglas (Gr'th'm)
Morrison, Hon P. (Chester)


Holland, Sir Philip (Gedling)
Moynihan, Hon C.


Holt, Richard
Mudd, David


Hooson, Tom
Murphy, Christopher


Hordern, Peter
Neale, Gerrard


Howarth, Alan (Stratf'd-on-A)
Needham, Richard


Howarth, Gerald (Cannock)
Nelson, Anthony


Howell, Rt Hon D. (G'Idford)
Neubert, Michael


Howell, Ralph (N Norfolk)
Newton, Tony


Hubbard-Miles, Peter
Nicholls, Patrick


Hunt, David (Wirral)
Normanton, Tom


Hunt, John (Ravensbourne)
Norris, Steven


Hunter, Andrew
Onslow, Cranley


Hurd, Rt Hon Douglas
Oppenheim, Philip


Irving, Charles
Oppenheim, Rt Hon Mrs S.


Jackson, Robert
Osborn, Sir John


Jenkin, Rt Hon Patrick
Ottaway, Richard


Jessel, Toby
Page, John (Harrow W)


Johnson-Smith, Sir Geoffrey
Parkinson, Rt Hon Cecil


Jones, Gwilym (Cardiff N)
Parris, Matthew


Jones, Robert (W Herts)
Patten, Christopher (Bath)


Joseph, Rt Hon Sir Keith
Patten, John (Oxford)


Kellett-Bowman, Mrs Elaine
Pattie, Geoffrey





Pawsey, James
Stewart, Allan (Eastwood)


Percival, Rt Hon Sir Ian
Stewart, Andrew (Sherwood)


Pink, R. Bonner
Stewart, Ian (N Hertf'dshire)


Pollock, Alexander
Stradling Thomas, J.


Porter, Barry
Sumberg, David


Powell, William (Corby)
Tapsell, Peter


Powley, John
Taylor, John (Solihull)


Prentice, Rt Hon Reg
Taylor, Teddy (S'end E)


Price, Sir David
Tebbit, Rt Hon Norman


Prior, Rt Hon James
Temple-Morris, Peter


Proctor, K. Harvey
Terlezki, Stefan


Pym, Rt Hon Francis
Thomas, Rt Hon Peter


Raffan, Keith
Thompson, Donald (Calder V)


Raison, Rt Hon Timothy
Thompson, Patrick (N'ich N)


Rathbone, Tim
Thorne, Neil (Ilford S)


Renton, Tim
Thornton, Malcolm


Rhodes James, Robert
Thurnham, Peter


Ridley, Rt Hon Nicholas
Townend, John (Bridlington)


Ridsdale, Sir Julian
Townsend, Cyril D. (B'heath)


Rippon, Rt Hon Geoffrey
Tracey, Richard


Roberts, Wyn (Conwy)
Trippier, David


Robinson, Mark (N'port W)
Trotter, Neville


Roe, Mrs Marion
Twinn, Dr Ian


Rossi, Sir Hugh
van Straubenzee, Sir W.


Rost, Peter
Vaughan, Sir Gerard


Rowe, Andrew
Viggers, Peter


Rumbold, Mrs Angela
Waddington, David


Ryder, Richard
Wakeham, Rt Hon John


Sackville, Hon Thomas
Waldegrave, Hon William


Sainsbury, Hon Timothy
Walden, George


St. John-Stevas, Rt Hon N.
Walker, Bill (T'side N)


Sayeed, Jonathan
Wall, Sir Patrick


Scott, Nicholas
Waller, Gary


Shaw, Giles (Pudsey)
Walters, Dennis


Shaw, Sir Michael (Scarb')
Ward, John


Shelton, William (Streatham)
Wardle, C. (Bexhill)


Shepherd, Colin (Hereford)
Warren, Kenneth


Shepherd, Richard (Aldridge)
Watson, John


Shersby, Michael
Watts, John


Silvester, Fred
Wells, Bowen (Hertford)


Sims, Roger
Wells, John (Maidstone)


Skeet, T. H. H.
Whitfield, John


Smith, Tim (Beaconsfield)
Whitney, Raymond


Soames, Hon Nicholas
Wiggin, Jerry


Speed, Keith
Winterton, Mrs Ann


Speller, Tony
Winterton, Nicholas


Spence, John
Wolfson, Mark


Spencer, D.
Wood, Timothy


Spicer, Jim (W Dorset)
Woodcock, Michael


Spicer, Michael (S Worcs)
Yeo, Tim


Squire, Robin
Young, Sir George (Acton)


Stanley, John



Steen, Anthony
Tellers for the Noes:


Stern, Michael
Mr. Carol Mather and


Stevens, Lewis (Nuneaton)
Mr. Robert Boscawen.


Stevens, Martin (Fulham)

Question accordingly negatived.

Motion made, and Question proposed,
That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, praying that the Housing Benefits Amendment (No. 2) Regulations 1984 (S.I., 1984, No. 104), dated 6th February 1984, a copy of which was laid before this House on 6th February, be annulled.—[Mr. Meacher.]

Question put:—

The House divided: Ayes 206, Noes 345.

Division No. 165]
[10.25 pm


AYES


Adams, Allen (Paisley N)
Beggs, Roy


Alton, David
Beith, A. J.


Anderson, Donald
Bell, Stuart


Archer, Rt Hon Peter
Bennett, A. (Dent'n &amp; Red'sh)


Ashdown, Paddy
Bermingham, Gerald


Ashley, Rt Hon Jack
Bidwell, Sydney


Ashton, Joe
Blair, Anthony


Atkinson, N. (Tottenham)
Boyes, Roland


Banks, Tony (Newham NW)
Bray, Dr Jeremy


Barnett, Guy
Brown, Gordon (D'f'mline E)






Brown, Hugh D. (Provan)
Jones, Barry (Alyn &amp; Deeside)


Brown, N. (N'c'tle-u-Tyne E)
Kaufman, Rt Hon Gerald


Bruce, Malcolm
Kennedy, Charles


Buchan, Norman
Kilroy-Silk, Robert


Callaghan, Jim (Heyw'd &amp; M)
Kirkwood, Archibald


Campbell, Ian
Lambie, David


Campbell-Savours, Dale
Lamond, James


Canavan, Dennis
Leadbitter, Ted


Carlile, Alexander (Montg'y)
Leighton, Ronald


Carter-Jones, Lewis
Lewis, Ron (Carlisle)


Cartwright, John
Lewis, Terence (Worsley)


Clark, Dr David (S Shields)
Litherland, Robert


Clay, Robert
Lloyd, Tony (Stretford)


Cocks, Rt Hon M. (Bristol S.)
Lofthouse, Geoffrey


Cohen, Harry
Loyden, Edward


Coleman, Donald
McCartney, Hugh


Concannon, Rt Hon J. D.
McCusker, Harold


Conlan, Bernard
McDonald, Dr Oonagh


Cook, Frank (Stockton North)
McGuire, Michael


Cook, Robin F. (Livingston)
McKelvey, William


Corbyn, Jeremy
McNamara, Kevin


Cowans, Harry
McTaggart, Robert


Craigen, J. M.
McWilliam, John


Crowther, Stan
Madden, Max


Dalyell, Tam
Maginnis, Ken


Davies, Rt Hon Denzil (L'lli)
Marek, Dr John


Davies, Ronald (Caerphilly)
Marshall, David (Shettleston)


Davis, Terry (B'ham, H'ge H'l)
Martin, Michael


Deakins, Eric
Maxton, John


Dewar, Donald
Meacher, Michael


Dixon, Donald
Meadowcroft, Michael


Dobson, Frank
Michie, William


Dormand, Jack
Mikardo, Ian


Douglas, Dick
Millan, Rt Hon Bruce


Dubs, Alfred
Mitchell, Austin (G't Grimsby)


Duffy, A. E. P.
Molyneaux, Rt Hon James


Dunwoody, Hon Mrs G.
Morris, Rt Hon A. (W'shawe)


Eadie, Alex
Morris, Rt Hon J. (Aberavon)


Eastham, Ken
Nellist, David


Ellis, Raymond
Nicholson, J.


Evans, John (St. Helens N)
Oakes, Rt Hon Gordon


Fatchett, Derek
O'Brien, William


Fields, T. (L'pool Broad Gn)
Park, George


Fisher, Mark
Parry, Robert


Flannery, Martin
Patchett, Terry


Foot, Rt Hon Michael
Pavitt, Laurie


Forrester, John
Penhaligon, David


Foster, Derek
Pike, Peter


Foulkes, George
Powell, Rt Hon J. E. (S Down)


Fraser, J. (Norwood)
Powell, Raymond (Ogmore)


Freeson, Rt Hon Reginald
Prescott, John


Freud, Clement
Radice, Giles


Garrett, W. E.
Randall, Stuart


George, Bruce
Redmond, M.


Gilbert, Rt Hon Dr John
Rees, Rt Hon M. (Leeds S)


Godman, Dr Norman
Richardson, Ms Jo


Golding, John
Roberts, Allan (Bootle)


Gould, Bryan
Roberts, Ernest (Hackney N)


Gourlay, Harry
Robertson, George


Hamilton, James (M'well N)
Robinson, G. (Coventry NW)


Hardy, Peter
Ross, Ernest (Dundee W)


Harman, Ms Harriet
Ross, Wm. (Londonderry)


Harrison, Rt Hon Walter
Rowlands, Ted


Hart, Rt Hon Dame Judith
Ryman, John


Hattersley, Rt Hon Roy
Sedgemore, Brian


Heffer, Eric S.
Sheerman, Barry


Hogg, N. (C'nauld &amp; Kilsyth)
Sheldon, Rt Hon R.


Holland, Stuart (Vauxhall)
Silkin, Rt Hon J.


Home Robertson, John
Skinner, Dennis


Howells, Geraint
Smith, C.(Isl'ton S &amp; F'bury)


Hoyle, Douglas
Smith, Rt Hon J. (M'kl'ds E)


Hughes, Dr. Mark (Durham)
Smyth, Rev W. M. (Belfast S)


Hughes, Robert (Aberdeen N)
Snape, Peter


Hughes, Roy (Newport East)
Soley, Clive


Hughes, Sean (Knowsley S)
Spearing, Nigel


Hughes, Simon (Southwark)
Stott, Roger


Janner, Hon Greville
Straw, Jack


Jenkins, Rt Hon Roy (Hillh'd)
Thomas, Dafydd (Merioneth)


John, Brynmor
Thomas, Dr R. (Carmarthen)


Johnston, Russell
Thompson, J. (Wansbeck)





Thorne, Stan (Preston)
Williams, Rt Hon A.


Tinn, James
Wilson, Gordon


Torney, Tom
Winnick, David


Walker, Cecil (Belfast N)
Woodall, Alec


Wallace, James
Wrigglesworth, Ian


Wardell, Gareth (Gower)
Young, David (Bolton SE)


Wareing, Robert



Weetch, Ken
Tellers for the Ayes:


Welsh, Michael
Mr. James Hamilton and


White, James
Mr. John McWilliam.


Wigley, Dafydd





NOES


Adley, Robert
Corrie, John


Aitken, Jonathan
Couchman, James


Alexander, Richard
Cranborne, Viscount


Alison, Rt Hon Michael
Crouch, David


Amess, David
Currie, Mrs Edwina


Ancram, Michael
Dickens, Geoffrey


Arnold, Tom
Dicks, Terry


Ashby, David
Dorrell, Stephen


Aspinwall, Jack
Douglas-Hamilton, Lord J.


Atkins, Rt Hon Sir H.
Dover, Den


Atkins, Robert (South Ribble)
du Cann, Rt Hon Edward


Atkinson, David (B'm'th E)
Dunn, Robert


Baker, Kenneth (Mole Valley)
Durant, Tony


Baker, Nicholas (N Dorset)
Edwards, Rt Hon N. (P'broke)


Baldry, Anthony
Eggar, Tim


Batiste, Spencer
Evennett, David


Beaumont-Dark, Anthony
Eyre, Sir Reginald


Bellingham, Henry
Fairbairn, Nicholas


Bendall, Vivian
Fallon, Michael


Bennett, Sir Frederic (T'bay)
Farr, John


Benyon, William
Favell, Anthony


Berry, Sir Anthony
Fenner, Mrs Peggy


Best, Keith
Finsberg, Sir Geoffrey


Bevan, David Gilroy
Fletcher, Alexander


Biffen, Rt Hon John
Fookes, Miss Janet


Biggs-Davison, Sir John
Forman, Nigel


Blaker, Rt Hon Sir Peter
Forsyth, Michael (Stirling)


Body, Richard
Forth, Eric


Boscawen, Hon Robert
Fowler, Rt Hon Norman


Bottomley, Peter
Fox, Marcus


Bowden, A. (Brighton K'to'n)
Franks, Cecil


Bowden, Gerald (Dulwich)
Fraser, Peter (Angus East)


Boyson, Dr Rhodes
Freeman, Roger


Brandon-Bravo, Martin
Fry, Peter


Bright, Graham
Gale, Roger


Brinton, Tim
Galley, Roy


Brittan, Rt Hon Leon
Gardiner, George (Reigate)


Brooke, Hon Peter
Garel-Jones, Tristan


Brown, M. (Brigg &amp; Cl'thpes)
Gilmour, Rt Hon Sir Ian


Browne, John
Glyn, Dr Alan


Bruinvels, Peter
Goodhart, Sir Philip


Bryan, Sir Paul
Goodlad, Alastair


Buck, Sir Antony
Gorst, John


Budgen, Nick
Gower, Sir Raymond


Bulmer, Esmond
Greenway, Harry


Butcher, John
Gregory, Conal


Butler, Hon Adam
Griffiths, E. (B'y St Edm'ds)


Butterfill, John
Griffiths, Peter (Portsm'th N)


Carlisle, John (N Luton)
Grist, Ian


Carlisle, Kenneth (Lincoln)
Ground, Patrick


Carttiss, Michael
Grylls, Michael


Chalker, Mrs Lynda
Hamilton, Hon A. (Epsom)


Channon, Rt Hon Paul
Hamilton, Neil (Tatton)


Chapman, Sydney
Hampson, Dr Keith


Chope, Christopher
Hanley, Jeremy


Churchill, W. S.
Hannam,John


Clark, Hon A. (Plym'th S'n)
Harris, David


Clark, Dr Michael (Rochford)
Harvey, Robert


Clark, Sir W. (Croydon S)
Haselhurst, Alan


Clarke, Kenneth (Rushcliffe)
Havers, Rt Hon Sir Michael


Clegg, Sir Walter
Hawkins, C. (High Peak)


Cockeram, Eric
Hawkins, Sir Paul (SW N'folk)


Colvin, Michael
Hawksley, Warren


Conway, Derek
Hayes, J.


Coombs, Simon
Hayhoe, Barney


Cope, John
Hayward, Robert


Cormack, Patrick
Heathcoat-Amory, David






Heddle, John
Miscampbell, Norman


Henderson, Barry
Mitchell, David (NW Hants)


Hickmet, Richard
Moate, Roger


Higgins, Rt Hon Terence L.
Monro, Sir Hector


Hill, James
Moore, John


Hind, Kenneth
Morris, M. (N'hampton, S)


Hirst, Michael
Morrison, Hon C. (Devizes)


Holland, Sir Philip (Gedling)
Morrison, Hon P. (Chester)


Holt, Richard
Moynihan, Hon C.


Hooson, Tom
Mudd, David


Hordern, Peter
Murphy, Christopher


Howard, Michael
Neale, Gerrard


Howarth, Alan (Stratf'd-on-A)
Needham, Richard


Howarth, Gerald (Cannock)
Nelson, Anthony


Howell, Rt Hon D. (G'Idford)
Newton, Tony


Howell, Ralph (N Norfolk)
Nicholls, Patrick


Hubbard-Miles, Peter
Normanton, Tom


Hunt, David (Wirral)
Norris, Steven


Hunt, John (Ravensbourne)
Onslow, Cranley


Hunter, Andrew
Oppenheim, Philip


Hurd, Rt Hon Douglas
Oppenheim, Rt Hon Mrs S.


Irving, Charles
Osborn, Sir John


Jackson, Robert
Ottaway, Richard


Jenkin, Rt Hon Patrick
Page, John (Harrow W)


Jessel, Toby
Parkinson, Rt Hon Cecil


Johnson-Smith, Sir Geoffrey
Parris, Matthew


Jones, Gwilym (Cardiff N)
Patten, Christopher (Bath)


Jones, Robert (W Herts)
Patten, John (Oxford)


Joseph, Rt Hon Sir Keith
Pattie, Geoffrey


Kellett-Bowman, Mrs Elaine
Pawsey, James


Key, Robert
Peacock, Mrs Elizabeth


King, Roger (B'ham N'field)
Percival, Rt Hon Sir Ian


Knight, Gregory (Derby N)
Pink, R. Bonner


Knight, Mrs Jill (Edgbaston)
Pollock, Alexander


Knowles, Michael
Porter, Barry


Knox, David
Powell, William (Corby)


Lamont, Norman
Powley, John


Lang, Ian
Prentice, Rt Hon Reg


Latham, Michael
Price, Sir David


Lawler, Geoffrey
Prior, Rt Hon James


Lawrence, Ivan
Proctor, K. Harvey


Lawson, Rt Hon Nigel
Pym, Rt Hon Francis


Lee, John (Pendle)
Raffan, Keith


Leigh, Edward (Gainsbor'gh)
Raison, Rt Hon Timothy


Lennox-Boyd, Hon Mark
Renton, Tim


Lewis, Sir Kenneth (Stamf'd)
Rhodes James, Robert


Lightbown, David
Ridley, Rt Hon Nicholas


Lilley, Peter
Ridsdale, Sir Julian


Lloyd, Ian (Havant)
Rippon, Rt Hon Geoffrey


Lloyd, Peter, (Fareham)
Roberts, Wyn (Conwy)


Lord, Michael
Robinson, Mark (N'port W)


Lyell, Nicholas
Roe, Mrs Marion


McCurley, Mrs Anna
Rossi, Sir Hugh


Macfarlane, Neil
Rost, Peter


MacGregor, John
Rowe, Andrew


MacKay, Andrew (Berkshire)
Rumbold, Mrs Angela


MacKay, John (Argyll &amp; Bute)
Ryder, Richard


Maclean, David John.
Sackville, Hon Thomas


McNair-Wilson, P. (New F'st)
Sainsbury, Hon Timothy


McQuarrie, Albert
St. John-Stevas, Rt Hon N.


Madel, David
Sayeed, Jonathan


Major, John
Shaw, Giles (Pudsey)


Malins, Humfrey
Shaw, Sir Michael (Scarb')


Malone, Gerald
Shelton, William (Streatham)


Maples, John
Shepherd, Colin (Hereford)


Marland, Paul
Shepherd, Richard (Aldridge)


Marlow, Antony
Shersby, Michael


Marshall, Michael (Arundel)
Silvester, Fred


Mates, Michael
Sims, Roger


Mather, Carol
Skeet, T. H. H.


Maude, Francis
Smith, Tim (Beaconsfield)


Mawhinney, Dr Brian
Soames, Hon Nicholas


Maxwell-Hyslop, Robin
Speed, Keith


Mayhew, Sir Patrick
Speller, Tony


Mellor, David
Spence, John


Merchant, Piers
Spencer, D.


Meyer, Sir Anthony
Spicer, Jim (W Dorset)


Miller, Hal (B'grove)
Squire, Robin


Mills, Iain (Meriden)
Stanley, John


Mills, Sir Peter (West Devon)
Steen, Anthony





Stern, Michael
Waddington, David


Stevens, Lewis (Nuneaton)
Wakeham, Rt Hon John


Stevens, Martin (Fulham)
Waldegrave, Hon William


Stewart, Allan (Eastwood)
Walden, George


Stewart, Andrew (Sherwood)
Walker, Bill (T'side N)


Stewart, Ian (N Hertf'dshire)
Wall, Sir Patrick


Stradling Thomas, J.
Waller, Gary


Sumberg, David
Walters, Dennis


Tapsell, Peter
Ward, John


Taylor, John (Solihull)
Wardle, C. (Bexhill)


Taylor, Teddy (S'end E)
Warren, Kenneth


Tebbit, Rt Hon Norman
Watson, John


Temple-Morris, Peter
Watts, John


Terlezki, Stefan
Wells, Bowen (Hertford)


Thomas, Rt Hon Peter
Wells, John (Maidstone)


Thompson, Donald (Calder V)
Whitfield, John


Thompson, Patrick (N'ich N)
Whitney, Raymond


Thorne, Neil (Ilford S)
Wiggin, Jerry


Thornton, Malcolm
Winterton, Mrs Ann


Thurnham, Peter
Winterton, Nicholas


Townend, John (Bridlington)
Wolfson, Mark


Townsend, Cyril D. (B'heath)
Wood, Timothy


Tracey, Richard
Woodcock, Michael


Trippier, David
Yeo, Tim


Trotter, Neville
Young, Sir George (Acton)


Twinn, Dr Ian



van Straubenzee, Sir W.
Tellers for the Noes:


Vaughan, Sir Gerard
Mr. Carol Mather and


Viggers, Peter
Mr. Robert Boscawen.

Question accordingly negatived.

Motion made, and Question proposed,
That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, praying that the Housing Benefits (Subsidy) Order 1984 (S.I., 1984, No. 110), dated 8th February 1984, a copy of which was laid before this House on 8th February, be annulled.—[Mr. Meacher]

Question put:—

The House divided: Ayes 204, Noes 348.

Division No. 166]
[10.40 pm


AYES


Adams, Allen (Paisley N)
Cook, Frank (Stockton North)


Alton, David
Cook, Robin F. (Livingston)


Anderson, Donald
Corbett, Robin


Archer, Rt Hon Peter
Corbyn, Jeremy


Ashdown, Paddy
Cowans, Harry


Ashley, Rt Hon Jack
Craigen, J. M.


Ashton, Joe
Crowther, Stan


Atkinson, N. (Tottenham)
Cunningham, Dr John


Banks, Tony (Newham NW)
Dalyell, Tam


Barnett, Guy
Davies, Rt Hon Denzil (L'lli)


Beckett, Mrs Margaret
Davies, Ronald (Caerphilly)


Beggs, Roy
Davis, Terry (B'ham, H'ge H'l)


Beith, A. J.
Deakins, Eric


Bell, Stuart
Dewar, Donald


Bennett, A. (Dent'n &amp; Red'sh)
Dixon, Donald


Bermingham, Gerald
Dobson, Frank


Bidwell, Sydney
Dormand, Jack


Blair, Anthony
Douglas, Dick


Boyes, Roland
Dubs, Alfred


Bray, Dr Jeremy
Duffy, A. E. P.


Brown, Gordon (D'f'mline E)
Dunwoody, Hon Mrs G.


Brown, Hugh D. (Provan)
Eadie, Alex


Bruce, Malcolm
Eastham, Ken


Buchan, Norman
Ellis, Raymond


Callaghan, Jim (Heyw'd &amp; M)
Evans, John (St. Helens N)


Campbell, Ian
Fatchett, Derek


Campbell-Savours, Dale
Field, Frank (Birkenhead)


Canavan, Dennis
Fields, T. (L'pool Broad Gn)


Carlile, Alexander (Montg'y)
Fisher, Mark


Carter-Jones, Lewis
Flannery, Martin


Cartwright, John
Foot, Rt Hon Michael


Clark, Dr David (S Shields)
Forrester, John


Clay, Robert
Foster, Derek


Cocks, Rt Hon M. (Bristol S.)
Foulkes, George


Cohen, Harry
Fraser, J. (Norwood)


Coleman, Donald
Freeson, Rt Hon Reginald


Concannon, Rt Hon J. D.
Freud, Clement


Conlan, Bernard
Garrett, W. E.






George, Bruce
Nellist, David


Gilbert, Rt Hon Dr John
Nicholson, J.


Godman, Dr Norman
Oakes, Rt Hon Gordon


Golding, John
O'Brien, William


Gould, Bryan
Park, George


Gourlay, Harry
Parry, Robert


Hamilton, W. W. (Central Fife)
Patchett, Terry


Hardy, Peter
Pavitt, Laurie


Harman, Ms Harriet
Penhaligon, David


Harrison, Rt Hon Walter
Pike, Peter


Hart, Rt Hon Dame Judith
Powell, Rt Hon J. E. (S Down)


Hattersley, Rt Hon Roy
Powell, Raymond (Ogmore)


Haynes, Frank
Prescott, John


Heffer, Eric S.
Radice, Giles


Hogg, N. (C'nauld &amp; Kilsyth)
Randall, Stuart


Holland, Stuart (Vauxhall)
Redmond, M.


Home Robertson, John
Rees, Rt Hon M. (Leeds S)


Howells, Geraint
Richardson, Ms Jo


Hoyle, Douglas
Roberts, Allan (Bootle)


Hughes, Dr. Mark (Durham)
Roberts, Ernest (Hackney N)


Hughes, Robert (Aberdeen N)
Robertson, George


Hughes, Roy (Newport East)
Robinson, G. (Coventry NW)


Hughes, Sean (Knowsley S)
Rooker, J. W.


Hughes, Simon (Southwark)
Ross, Ernest (Dundee W)


Janner, Hon Greville
Ross, Wm. (Londonderry)


Jenkins, Rt Hon Roy (Hillh'd)
Rowlands, Ted


John, Brynmor
Ryman, John


Johnston, Russell
Sedgemore, Brian


Jones, Barry (Alyn &amp; Deeside)
Sheerman, Barry


Kaufman, Rt Hon Gerald
Sheldon, Rt Hon R.


Kennedy, Charles
Short, Mrs R. (W'hampt'n NE)


Kilroy-Silk, Robert
Silkin, Rt Hon J.


Kirkwood, Archibald
Skinner, Dennis


Lambie, David
Smith, C. (Isl'ton S &amp; F'bury)


Lamond, James
Smith, Rt Hon J. (M'kl'ds E)


Leadbitter, Ted
Smyth, Rev W. M. (Belfast S)


Leighton, Ronald
Snape, Peter


Lewis, Ron (Carlisle)
Soley, Clive


Lewis, Terence (Worsley)
Spearing, Nigel


Litherland, Robert
Stewart, Rt Hon D. (W Isles)


Lloyd, Tony (Stretford)
Stott, Roger


Lofthouse, Geoffrey
Straw, Jack


Loyden, Edward
Thomas, Dafydd (Merioneth)


McCartney, Hugh
Thomas, Dr R. (Carmarthen)


McCusker, Harold
Thompson, J. (Wansbeck)


McDonald, Dr Oonagh
Thorne, Stan (Preston)


McGuire, Michael
Tinn, James


McKay, Allen (Penistone)
Torney, Tom


McKelvey, William
Walker, Cecil (Belfast N)


McNamara, Kevin
Wallace, James


McTaggart, Robert
Wardell, Gareth (Gower)


Madden, Max
Wareing, Robert


Maginnis, Ken
Weetch, Ken


Marek, Dr John
Welsh, Michael


Marshall, David (Shettleston)
White, James


Martin, Michael
Wigley, Dafydd


Maxton, John
Williams, Rt Hon A.


Meacher, Michael
Wilson, Gordon


Meadowcroft, Michael
Winnick, David


Michie, William
Woodall, Alec


Mikardo, Ian
Wrigglesworth, Ian


Millan, Rt Hon Bruce
Young, David (Bolton SE)


Mitchell, Austin (G't Grimsby)



Molyneaux, Rt Hon James
Tellers for the Ayes:


Morris, Rt Hon A. (W'shawe)
Mr. James Hamilton and


Morris, Rt Hon J. (Aberavon)
Mr. John McWilliam




NOES


Adley, Robert
Baker, Kenneth (Mole Valley)


Aitken, Jonathan
Baker, Nicholas (N Dorset)


Alexander, Richard
Baldry, Anthony


Alison, Rt Hon Michael
Batiste, Spencer


Amess, David
Beaumont-Dark, Anthony


Ancram, Michael
Bendall, Vivian


Arnold, Tom
Bennett, Sir Frederic (T'bay)


Ashby, David
Benyon, William


Aspinwall, Jack
Berry, Sir Anthony


Atkins, Rt Hon Sir H.
Best, Keith


Atkins, Robert (South Ribble)
Bevan, David Gilroy


Atkinson, David (B'm'th E)
Biffen, Rt Hon John





Biggs-Davison, Sir John
Gilmour, Rt Hon Sir Ian


Blaker, Rt Hon Sir Peter
Glyn, Dr Alan


Body, Richard
Goodhart, Sir Philip


Boscawen, Hon Robert
Goodlad, Alastair


Bottomley, Peter
Gorst, John


Bowden, A. (Brighton K'to'n)
Gower, Sir Raymond


Bowden, Gerald (Dulwich)
Greenway, Harry


Boyson, Dr Rhodes
Gregory, Conal


Brandon-Bravo, Martin
Griffiths, E. (B'y St Edm'ds)


Bright, Graham
Griffiths, Peter (Portsm'th N)


Brinton, Tim
Grist, Ian


Brittan, Rt Hon Leon
Ground, Patrick


Brooke, Hon Peter
Grylls, Michael


Brown, M. (Brigg &amp; Cl'thpes)
Hamilton, Hon A. (Epsom)


Browne, John
Hamilton, Neil (Tatton)


Bruinvels, Peter
Hampson, Dr Keith


Bryan, Sir Paul
Hanley, Jeremy


Buck, Sir Antony
Hannam, John


Budgen, Nick
Harris, David


Bulmer, Esmond
Harvey, Robert


Butcher, John
Haselhurst, Alan


Butler, Hon Adam
Havers, Rt Hon Sir Michael


Butterfill, John
Hawkins, C. (High Peak)


Carlisle, John (N Luton)
Hawkins, Sir Paul (SW N'folk)


Carlisle, Kenneth (Lincoln)
Hawksley, Warren


Carttiss, Michael
Hayes, J.


Chalker, Mrs Lynda
Hayhoe, Barney


Channon, Rt Hon Paul
Hayward, Robert


Chapman, Sydney
Heathcoat-Amory, David


Chope, Christopher
Heddle, John


Churchill, W. S.
Henderson, Barry


Clark, Hon A. (Plym'th S'n)
Hickmet, Richard


Clark, Dr Michael (Rochford)
Higgins, Rt Hon Terence L.


Clark, Sir W. (Croydon S)
Hill, James


Clarke, Kenneth (Rushcliffe)
Hind, Kenneth


Clegg, Sir Walter
Hirst, Michael


Cockeram, Eric
Holland, Sir Philip (Gedling)


Colvin, Michael
Holt, Richard


Conway, Derek
Hooson, Tom


Coombs, Simon
Hordern, Peter


Cope, John
Howarth, Alan (Stratf'd-on-A)


Cormack, Patrick
Howarth, Gerald (Cannock)


Corrie, John
Howell, Rt Hon D. (G'Idford)


Couchman, James
Howell, Ralph (N Norfolk)


Cranborne, Viscount
Hubbard-Miles, Peter


Crouch, David
Hunt, David (Wirral)


Currie, Mrs Edwina
Hunt, John (Ravensbourne)


Dickens, Geoffrey
Hunter, Andrew


Dicks, Terry
Hurd, Rt Hon Douglas


Dorrell, Stephen
Irving, Charles


Douglas-Hamilton, Lord J.
Jackson, Robert


Dover, Den
Jenkin, Rt Hon Patrick


du Cann, Rt Hon Edward
Jessel, Toby


Dunn, Robert
Johnson-Smith, Sir Geoffrey


Durant, Tony
Jones, Gwilym (Cardiff N)


Edwards, Rt Hon N. (P'broke)
Jones, Robert (W Herts)


Eggar, Tim
Joseph, Rt Hon Sir Keith


Evennett, David
Kellett-Bowman, Mrs Elaine


Eyre, Sir Reginald
Kershaw, Sir Anthony


Fairbairn, Nicholas
Key, Robert


Fallon, Michael
King, Roger (B'ham N'field)


Farr, John
Knight, Gregory (Derby N)


Favell, Anthony
Knight, Mrs Jill (Edgbaston)


Fenner, Mrs Peggy
Knowles, Michael


Finsberg, Sir Geoffrey
Knox, David


Fletcher, Alexander
Lamont, Norman


Fookes, Miss Janet
Lang, Ian


Forman, Nigel
Latham, Michael


Forsyth, Michael (Stirling)
Lawler, Geoffrey


Forth, Eric
Lawrence, Ivan


Fowler, Rt Hon Norman
Lawson, Rt Hon Nigel


Fox, Marcus
Lee, John (Pendle)


Franks, Cecil
Leigh, Edward (Gainsbor'gh)


Fraser, Peter (Angus East)
Lennox-Boyd, Hon Mark


Freeman, Roger
Lewis, Sir Kenneth (Stamf'd)


Fry, Peter
Lightbown, David


Gale, Roger
Lilley, Peter


Galley, Roy
Lloyd, Ian (Havant)


Gardiner, George (Reigate)
Lloyd, Peter, (Fareham)


Garel-Jones, Tristan
Lord, Michael






Lyell, Nicholas
Robinson, Mark (N'port W)


McCurley, Mrs Anna
Roe, Mrs Marion


Macfarlane, Neil
Rossi, Sir Hugh


MacGregor, John
Rost, Peter


MacKay, Andrew (Berkshire)
Rowe, Andrew


MacKay, John (Argyll &amp; Bute)
Rumbold, Mrs Angela


Maclean, David John.
Ryder, Richard


McNair-Wilson, P. (New F'st)
Sackville, Hon Thomas


McQuarrie, Albert
Sainsbury, Hon Timothy


Madel, David
St. John-Stevas, Rt Hon N.


Major, John
Sayeed, Jonathan


Malins, Humfrey
Shaw, Giles (Pudsey)


Malone, Gerald
Shaw, Sir Michael (Scarb')


Maples, John
Shelton, William (Streatham)


Marland, Paul
Shepherd, Colin (Hereford)


Marlow, Antony
Shepherd, Richard (Aldridge)


Marshall, Michael (Arundel)
Shersby, Michael


Mates, Michael
Silvester, Fred


Mather, Carol
Sims, Roger


Maude, Francis
Skeet, T. H. H.


Mawhinney, Dr Brian
Smith, Tim (Beaconsfield)


Maxwell-Hyslop, Robin
Soames, Hon Nicholas


Mayhew, Sir Patrick
Speed, Keith


Mellor, David
Speller, Tony


Merchant, Piers
Spence, John


Meyer, Sir Anthony
Spencer, D.


Miller, Hal (B'grove)
Spicer, Jim (W Dorset)


Mills, Iain (Meriden)
Squire, Robin


Mills, Sir Peter (West Devon)
Stanley, John


Miscampbell, Norman
Steen, Anthony


Mitchell, David (NW Hants)
Stern, Michael


Moate, Roger
Stevens, Lewis (Nuneaton)


Monro, Sir Hector
Stevens, Martin (Fulham)


Moore, John
Stewart, Allan (Eastwood)


Morris, M. (N'hampton, S)
Stewart, Andrew (Sherwood)


Morrison, Hon C. (Devizes)
Stewart, Ian (N Hertf'dshire)


Morrison, Hon P. (Chester)
Stradling Thomas, J.


Moynihan, Hon C.
Sumberg, David


Mudd, David
Tapsell, Peter


Murphy, Christopher
Taylor, John (Solihull)


Neale, Gerrard
Taylor, Teddy (S'end E)


Needham, Richard
Tebbit, Rt Hon Norman


Nelson, Anthony
Temple-Morris, Peter


Newton, Tony
Terlezki, Stefan


Nicholls, Patrick
Thomas, Rt Hon Peter


Normanton, Tom
Thompson, Donald (Calder V)


Norris, Steven
Thompson, Patrick (N'ich N)


Onslow, Cranley
Thorne, Neil (Ilford S)


Oppenheim, Philip
Thornton, Malcolm


Oppenheim, Rt Hon Mrs S.
Thurnham, Peter


Osborn, Sir John
Townend, John (Bridlington)


Ottaway, Richard
Townsend, Cyril D. (B'heath)


Page, John (Harrow W)
Tracey, Richard


Parkinson, Rt Hon Cecil
Trippier, David


Parris, Matthew
Trotter, Neville


Patten, Christopher (Bath)
Twinn, Dr Ian


Patten, John (Oxford)
van Straubenzee, Sir W.


Pattie, Geoffrey
Vaughan, Sir Gerard


Pawsey, James
Viggers, Peter


Peacock, Mrs Elizabeth
Waddington, David


Percival, Rt Hon Sir Ian
Wakeham, Rt Hon John


Pink, R. Bonner
Waldegrave, Hon William


Pollock, Alexander
Walden, George


Porter, Barry
Walker, Bill (T'side N)


Powell, William (Corby)
Wall, Sir Patrick


Powley, John
Waller, Gary


Prentice, Rt Hon Reg
Walters, Dennis


Price, Sir David
Ward, John


Prior, Rt Hon James
Wardle, C. (Bexhill)


Proctor, K. Harvey
Warren, Kenneth


Pym, Rt Hon Francis
Watson, John


Raffan, Keith
Watts, John


Raison, Rt Hon Timothy
Wells, Bowen (Hertford)


Rathbone, Tim
Wells, John (Maidstone)


Renton, Tim
Whitfield, John


Rhodes James, Robert
Whitney, Raymond


Ridley, Rt Hon Nicholas
Wiggin, Jerry


Ridsdale, Sir Julian
Winterton, Mrs Ann


Rippon, Rt Hon Geoffrey
Winterton, Nicholas


Roberts, Wyn (Conwy)
Wolfson, Mark





Wood, Timothy



Woodcock, Michael
Tellers for the Noes:


Yeo, Tim
Mr. Douglas Hogg and


Young, Sir George (Acton)
Mr. Michael Neubert.

Question accordingly negatived.

Motion made, and Question proposed,
That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, praying that the Housing Benefits (Rate Support Grant) Order 1984 (S.I., 1984, No. 111), dated 8th February 1984, a copy of which was laid before this House on 8th February, be annulled.—[Mr. Meacher.]

Question put:—

The House divided: Ayes 196, Noes 348.

Division No. 167]
[10.55 pm


AYES


Adams, Allen (Paisley N)
Ellis, Raymond


Alton, David
Evans, John (St. Helens N)


Anderson, Donald
Fatchett, Derek


Archer, Rt Hon Peter
Field, Frank (Birkenhead)


Ashdown, Paddy
Fields, T. (L'pool Broad Gn)


Ashley, Rt Hon Jack
Fisher, Mark


Ashton, Joe
Flannery, Martin


Atkinson, N. (Tottenham)
Foot, Rt Hon Michael


Banks, Tony (Newham NW)
Forrester, John


Barnett, Guy
Foster, Derek


Beckett, Mrs Margaret
Foulkes, George


Beggs, Roy
Fraser, J. (Norwood)


Beith, A. J.
Freeson, Rt Hon Reginald


Bell, Stuart
Freud, Clement


Bennett, A. (Dent'n &amp; Red'sh)
George, Bruce


Bermingham, Gerald
Gilbert, Rt Hon Dr John


Bidwell, Sydney
Godman, Dr Norman


Blair, Anthony
Golding, John


Boyes, Roland
Gould, Bryan


Bray, Dr Jeremy
Gourlay, Harry


Brown, Gordon (D'f'mline E)
Hamilton, W. W. (Central Fife)


Brown, Hugh D. (Provan)
Hardy, Peter


Brown, N. (N'c'tle-u-Tyne E)
Harman, Ms Harriet


Bruce, Malcolm
Harrison, Rt Hon Walter


Buchan, Norman
Hart, Rt Hon Dame Judith


Callaghan, Jim (Heyw'd &amp; M)
Hattersley, Rt Hon Roy


Campbell, Ian
Haynes, Frank


Campbell-Savours, Dale
Heffer, Eric S.


Canavan, Dennis
Hogg, N. (C'nauld &amp; Kilsyth)


Carlile, Alexander (Montg'y)
Holland, Stuart (Vauxhall)


Carter-Jones, Lewis
Home Robertson, John


Cartwright, John
Howells, Geraint


Clark, Dr David (S Shields)
Hoyle, Douglas


Clay, Robert
Hughes, Dr. Mark (Durham)


Cocks, Rt Hon M. (Bristol S.)
Hughes, Robert (Aberdeen N)


Cohen, Harry
Hughes, Roy (Newport East)


Coleman, Donald
Hughes, Sean (Knowsley S)


Concannon, Rt Hon J. D.
Hughes, Simon (Southwark)


Conlan, Bernard
Janner, Hon Greville


Cook, Frank (Stockton North)
Jenkins, Rt Hon Roy (Hillh'd)


Cook, Robin F. (Livingston)
John, Brynmor


Corbett, Robin
Johnston, Russell


Corbyn, Jeremy
Jones, Barry (Alyn &amp; Deeside)


Cowans, Harry
Kaufman, Rt Hon Gerald


Craigen, J. M.
Kennedy, Charles


Crowther, Stan
Kilroy-Silk, Robert


Cunningham, Dr John
Kirkwood, Archibald


Dalyell, Tam
Lambie, David


Davies, Rt Hon Denzil (L'lli)
Lamond, James


Davies, Ronald (Caerphilly)
Leadbitter, Ted


Davis, Terry (B'ham, H'ge H'l)
Leighton, Ronald


Deakins, Eric
Lewis, Ron (Carlisle)


Dewar, Donald
Lewis, Terence (Worsley)


Dixon, Donald
Litherland, Robert


Dobson, Frank
Lloyd, Tony (Stretford)


Dormand, Jack
Lofthouse, Geoffrey


Douglas, Dick
Loyden, Edward


Dubs, Alfred
McCartney, Hugh


Duffy, A. E. P.
McCusker, Harold


Dunwoody, Hon Mrs G.
McDonald, Dr Oonagh


Eadie, Alex
McGuire, Michael


Eastham, Ken
McKay, Allen (Penistone)






McKelvey, William
Ross, Ernest (Dundee W)


McNamara, Kevin
Ross, Wm. (Londonderry)


McTaggart, Robert
Rowlands, Ted


Madden, Max
Ryman, John


Maginnis, Ken
Sedgemore, Brian


Marek, Dr John
Sheerman, Barry


Marshall, David (Shettleston)
Sheldon, Rt Hon R.


Martin, Michael
Short, Mrs R. (W'hampt'n NE)


Mason, Rt Hon Roy
Silkin, Rt Hon J.


Maxton, John
Skinner, Dennis


Meacher, Michael
Smith, C. (Isl'ton S &amp; F'bury)


Meadowcroft, Michael
Smith, Rt Hon J. (M'kl'ds E)


Michie, William
Smyth, Rev W. M. (Belfast S)


Mikardo, Ian
Snape, Peter


Millan, Rt Hon Bruce
Soley, Clive


Mitchell, Austin (G't Grimsby)
Spearing, Nigel


Molyneaux, Rt Hon James
Stewart, Ian (N Hertf'dshire)


Morris, Rt Hon A. (W'shawe)
Stott, Roger


Morris, Rt Hon J. (Aberavon)
Straw, Jack


Nellist, David
Thomas, Dafydd (Merioneth)


Nicholson, J.
Thomas, Dr R. (Carmarthen)


Oakes, Rt Hon Gordon
Thompson, J. (Wansbeck)


O'Brien, William
Thorne, Stan (Preston)


Park, George
Tinn, James


Parry, Robert
Torney, Tom


Patchett, Terry
Walker, Cecil (Belfast N)


Pavitt, Laurie
Wallace, James


Peacock, Mrs Elizabeth
Wardell, Gareth (Gower)


Penhaligon, David
Wareing, Robert


Pike, Peter
Weetch, Ken


Powell, Rt Hon J. E. (S Down)
Welsh, Michael


Powell, Raymond (Ogmore)
White, James


Prescott, John
Wigley, Dafydd


Radice, Giles
Williams, Rt Hon A.


Randall, Stuart
Wilson, Gordon


Redmond, M.
Winnick, David


Rees, Rt Hon M. (Leeds S)
Woodall, Alec


Richardson, Ms Jo
Wrigglesworth, Ian


Roberts, Allan (Bootle)
Young, David (Bolton SE)


Roberts, Ernest (Hackney N)



Robertson, George
Tellers for the Ayes:


Robinson, G. (Coventry NW)
Mr. Frank Haynes and


Rooker, J. W,
Mr. Allen McKay.




NOES


Adley, Robert
Brittan, Rt Hon Leon


Aitken, Jonathan
Brooke, Hon Peter


Alexander, Richard
Brown, M. (Brigg &amp; Cl'thpes)


Alison, Rt Hon Michael
Browne, John


Amess, David
Bruinvels, Peter


Ancram, Michael
Bryan, Sir Paul


Arnold, Tom
Buck, Sir Antony


Ashby, David
Budgen, Nick


Aspinwall, Jack
Bulmer, Esmond


Atkins, Rt Hon Sir H.
Butcher, John


Atkins, Robert (South Ribble)
Butler, Hon Adam


Atkinson, David (B'm'th E)
Butterfill, John


Baker, Kenneth, (Mole Valley)
Carlisle, John (N Luton)


Baker, Nicholas (N Dorset)
Carlisle, Kenneth (Lincoln)


Baldry, Anthony
Carttiss, Michael


Batiste, Spencer
Chalker, Mrs Lynda


Beaumont-Dark, Anthony
Channon, Rt Hon Paul


Bellingham, Henry
Chapman, Sydney


Bendall, Vivian
Chope, Christopher


Bennett, Sir Frederic (T'bay)
Churchill, W. S.


Benyon, William
Clark, Hon A. (Plym'th S'n)


Berry, Sir Anthony
Clark, Dr Michael (Rochford)


Best, Keith
Clark, Sir W. (Croydon S)


Bevan, David Gilroy
Clarke, Kenneth (Rushcliffe)


Biffen, Rt Hon John
Clegg, Sir Walter


Biggs-Davison, Sir John
Cockeram, Eric


Blaker, Rt Hon Sir Peter
Colvin, Michael


Body, Richard
Conway, Derek


Bottomley, Peter
Coombs, Simon


Bowden, A. (Brighton K'to'n)
Cope, John


Bowden, Gerald (Dulwich)
Cormack, Patrick


Boyson, Dr Rhodes
Corrie, John


Brandon-Bravo, Martin
Couchman, James


Bright, Graham
Cranbome, Viscount


Brinton, Tim
Crouch, David





Currie, Mrs Edwina
Hunt, John (Ravensbourne)


Dickens, Geoffrey
Hunter, Andrew


Dicks, Terry
Irving, Charles


Dorrell, Stephen
Jackson, Robert


Douglas-Hamilton, Lord J.
Jenkin, Rt Hon Patrick


Dover, Den
Jessel, Toby


du Cann, Rt Hon Edward
Johnson-Smith, Sir Geoffrey


Dunn, Robert
Jones, Gwilym (Cardiff N)


Durant, Tony
Jones, Robert (W Herts)


Edwards, Rt Hon N. (P'broke)
Joseph, Rt Hon Sir Keith


Eggar, Tim
Kellett-Bowman, Mrs Elaine


Evennett, David
Kershaw, Sir Anthony


Eyre, Sir Reginald
Key, Robert


Fairbairn, Nicholas
King, Roger (B'ham N'field)


Fallon, Michael
Knight, Gregory (Derby N)


Farr, John
Knight, Mrs Jill (Edgbaston)


Favell, Anthony
Knowles, Michael


Fenner, Mrs Peggy
Knox, David


Finsberg, Sir Geoffrey
Lamont, Norman


Fletcher, Alexander
Lang, Ian


Fookes, Miss Janet
Latham, Michael


Forman, Nigel
Lawler, Geoffrey


Forsyth, Michael (Stirling)
Lawrence, Ivan


Forth, Eric
Lawson, Rt Hon Nigel


Fowler, Rt Hon Norman
Lee, John (Pendle)


Fox, Marcus
Leigh, Edward (Gainsbor'gh)


Franks, Cecil
Lennox-Boyd, Hon Mark


Fraser, Peter (Angus East)
Lewis, Sir Kenneth (Stamf'd)


Freeman, Roger
Lightbown, David


Fry, Peter
Lilley, Peter


Gale, Roger
Lloyd, Ian (Havant)


Galley, Roy
Lloyd, Peter, (Fareham)


Gardiner, George (Reigate)
Lord, Michael


Garel-Jones, Tristan
Lyell, Nicholas


Gilmour, Rt Hon Sir Ian
McCurley, Mrs Anna


Glyn, Dr Alan
Macfarlane, Neil


Goodhart, Sir Philip
MacGregor, John


Goodlad, Alastair
MacKay, Andrew (Berkshire)


Gorst, John
MacKay, John (Argyll &amp; Bute)


Gower, Sir Raymond
Maclean, David John.


Greenway, Harry
McNair-Wilson, P. (New F'st)


Gregory, Conal
McQuarrie, Albert


Griffiths, E. (B'y St Edm'ds)
Madel, David


Griffiths, Peter (Portsm'th N)
Major, John


Ground, Patrick
Malins, Humfrey


Grylls, Michael
Malone, Gerald


Hamilton, Hon A. (Epsom)
Maples, John


Hamilton, Neil (Tatton)
Marland, Paul


Hampson, Dr Keith
Marlow, Antony


Hanley, Jeremy
Marshall, Michael (Arundel)


Hannam,John
Mates, Michael


Harris, David
Maude, Hon. Francis


Harvey, Robert
Mawhinney, Dr Brian


Haselhurst, Alan
Maxwell-Hyslop, Robin


Havers, Rt Hon Sir Michael
Mayhew, Sir Patrick


Hawkins, C. (High Peak)
Mellor, David


Hawkins, Sir Paul (SW N'folk)
Merchant, Piers


Hawksley, Warren
Meyer, Sir Anthony


Hayes, J.
Miller, Hal (B'grove)


Hayhoe, Barney
Mills, Iain (Meriden)


Hayward, Robert
Mills, Sir Peter (West Devon)


Heathcoat-Amory, David
Miscampbell, Norman


Heddle, John
Mitchell, David (NW Hants)


Henderson, Barry
Moate, Roger


Hickmet, Richard
Monro, Sir Hector


Higgins, Rt Hon Terence L.
Moore, John


Hill, James
Morris, M. (N'hampton, S)


Hind, Kenneth
Morrison, Hon C. (Devizes)


Hirst, Michael
Morrison, Hon P. (Chester)


Hogg, Hon Douglas (Gr'th'm)
Moynihan, Hon C.


Holland, Sir Philip (Gedling)
Mudd, David


Holt, Richard
Murphy, Christopher


Hooson, Tom
Neale, Gerrard


Hordern, Peter
Needham, Richard


Howarth, Alan (Stratf'd-on-A)
Nelson, Anthony


Howarth, Gerald (Cannock)
Neubert, Michael


Howell, Rt Hon D. (G'Idford)
Newton, Tony


Howell, Ralph (N Norfolk)
Nicholls, Patrick


Hubbard-Miles, Peter
Normanton, Tom


Hunt, David (Wirral)
Norris, Steven






Onslow, Cranley
Shelton, William (Streatham)


Oppenheim, Philip
Shepherd, Colin (Hereford)


Oppenheim, Rt Hon Mrs S.
Shepherd, Richard (Aldridge)


Osborn, Sir John
Shersby, Michael


Ottaway, Richard
Silvester, Fred


Page, John (Harrow W)
Sims, Roger


Parkinson, Rt Hon Cecil
Skeet, T. H. H.


Parris, Matthew
Smith, Tim (Beaconsfield)


Patten, Christopher (Bath)
Soames, Hon Nicholas


Patten, John (Oxford)
Speed, Keith


Pattie, Geoffrey
Speller, Tony


Pawsey, James
Spence, John


Percival, Rt Hon Sir Ian
Spencer, D.


Pink, R. Bonner
Spicer, Jim (W Dorset)


Pollock, Alexander
Squire, Robin


Powell, William (Corby)
Stanley, John


Powley, John
Steen, Anthony


Prentice, Rt Hon Reg
Stern, Michael


Price, Sir David
Stevens, Lewis (Nuneaton)


Prior, Rt Hon James
Stevens, Martin (Fulham)


Proctor, K. Harvey
Stewart, Allan (Eastwood)


Pym, Rt Hon Francis
Stewart, Andrew (Sherwood)


Raffan, Keith
Stewart, Ian (N Hertf'dshire)


Raison, Rt Hon Timothy
Stradling Thomas, J.


Rathbone, Tim
Sumberg, David


Renton, Tim
Tapsell, Peter


Rhodes James, Robert
Taylor, John (Solihull)


Ridley, Rt Hon Nicholas
Taylor, Teddy (S'end E)


Ridsdale, Sir Julian
Tebbit, Rt Hon Norman


Rippon, Rt Hon Geoffrey
Temple-Morris, Peter


Roberts, Wyn (Conwy)
Terlezki, Stefan


Robinson, Mark (N'port W)
Thomas, Rt Hon Peter


Roe, Mrs Marion
Thompson, Donald (Calder V)


Rossi, Sir Hugh
Thompson, Patrick (N'ich N)


Rost, Peter
Thorne, Neil (Ilford S)


Rowe, Andrew
Thornton, Malcolm


Rumbold, Mrs Angela
Thumham, Peter


Ryder, Richard
Townend, John (Bridlington)


Sackville, Hon Thomas
Townsend. Cyril D. (B'heath)


Sainsbury, Hon Timothy
Tracey, Richard


St. John-Stevas, Rt Hon N.
Trippier, David


Sayeed, Jonathan
Trotter, Neville


Shaw, Giles (Pudsey)
Twinn, Dr Ian


Shaw, Sir Michael (Scarb')
van Straubenzee, Sir W.





Vaughan, Sir Gerard
Wells, John (Maidstone)


Viggers, Peter
Whitfield, John


Waddington, David
Whitney, Raymond


Wakeham, Rt Hon John
Wiggin, Jerry


Waldegrave, Hon William
Winterton, Mrs Ann


Walden, George
Winterton, Nicholas


Walker, Bill (T'side N)
Wolfson, Mark


Wall, Sir Patrick
Wood, Timothy


Waller, Gary
Woodcock, Michael


Walters, Dennis
Yeo, Tim


Ward, John
Young, Sir George (Acton)


Wardle, C. (Bexhill)



Warren, Kenneth
Tellers for the Noes:


Watson, John
Mr. Douglas Hogg and


Watts, John
Mr. Michael Neubert.


Wells, Bowen (Hertford)

Question accordingly negatived.

STATUTORY INSTRUMENTS, &c.

MEDICINES

Motion made, and Question put forthwith pursuant to Standing Order No. 79(5) (Standing Committees on Statutory Instruments, &amp;c.):—
That the draft Medicines (Cyanogenetic Substances) Order 1984, which was laid before this House on 17th January, be approved.—[Mr. Archie Hamilton.]

Question agreed to.

ECCLESIASTICAL LAW

Motion made, and Question put forthwith pursuant to Standing Order No. 79(5) (Standing Committees on Statutory Instruments, &amp;c.):—
That the draft Grants to Redundant Churches Fund Order 1984, which was laid before this House on 20th January, be approved.—[Mr. Archie Hamilton.]

Question agreed to.

Commonwealth Development Corporation

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Archie Hamilton.]

Mr. Dennis Canavan: I welcome the opportunity to have a debate on the involvement of the Commonwealth Development Corporation in the Philippines.
The Philippines is of major strategic importance to the United States of America and her allies, including Britain; and, to maintain its economic and military interests in the Philippines, it has been necessary for the United States to increase its bilaterial aid to the country throughout the seventies, and multilateral aid, mainly from the World Bank, of which Britain is a major contributor, has also greatly increased. Despite this, there has been a steady deterioration in the economy, making it necessary for other sources of bilateral aid to the Philippines to be called upon. The British Government appear to have responded to this.
In 1979, Britain's aid budget to the Philippines was in the region of £25,000 per annum, mainly in the form of funding for projects in the voluntary sector, and scholarships for Philippines Government personnel. However, despite considerable constraints on the aid budget in recent years, there has been a dramatic expansion in bilaterial aid from Britain to the Philippines under the present Tory Government. In 1982, the Commonwealth Development Corporation granted a £5 million loan to the private development corporation of the Philippines. In January 1983, the CDC granted a £6·4 million loan to the NDC/Guthrie Corporation for the development of a palm oil plantation, and further investments are expected. The CDC is currently negotiating an investment into palm oil in partnership with the Philippine Government, and the British Government have promised a £20 million trade aid deal if the Davey Steel Mill Corporation wins a £129 million contract. Effectively, such bilateral and multilateral aid programmes are topping up a repressive anti-democratic regime that has, since the assassination of Benigno Aquino on 21 August last year, lost all popular support in the country, and has been internationally discredited.
British interest in palm oil investments in the Philippines began in the seventies when the Guthrie Corporation, at that time British owned, carried out feasibility studies to determine the profitability of plantation development in the province of Agusan del Sur on the isle of Mindanao. In 1979, 40,550 hectares of land in this area were set aside for plantation development by the National Development Corporation, which is the main instrument of the Philippine Government to make lands available for large agribusiness projects.
In April 1980, Guthrie incorporated with the NDC to form NDC Guthrie Plantations Incorporated, or NGPI, for the purpose of establishing an 8,000 hectare palm oil plantation in Agusan del Sur. In October 1981, Guthrie was bought out by the Malaysian Government. In January 1983, the CDC granted a £6·4 million loan for the expansion of the plantation.
This loan has been the subject of considerable controversy since January 1982 when, while it was still under negotiation, it was reported in The Observer that the management of NGPI was employing a paramilitary squad, known as the Lost Command, as security guards on the plantation. More than 30 farmers were reported to have been killed by the Lost Command as it forced people off their lands to make way for the plantation As the protest grew, and human rights campaigners argued that British taxpayers' money should not be used to support such projects, Sir Peter Meinertzhagen, general manager of CDC, visited the area and returned saying that there was no real problem.
In August 1982 the Catholic Institute for International Relations published a booklet outlining the appalling human rights violations in connection with the activities of the Lost Command, and it concluded that CDC should not invest. In November 1982, an all-party delegation of Members of Parliament and representatives of several voluntary agencies met the Minister's predecessor, Neil Marten, to express their disquiet about CDC's loan to the project. During that meeting, a petition signed by 1,000 local farmers and NGPI workers was presented to the Minister protesting against the plantation.
The matter was raised again in the House on 7 December 1982 when the Commonwealth Development Corporation Bill came up for amendment. Before the debate Sir Peter Meinertzhagen had wrongly advised the then Minister that Bishop Morelos of Agusan supported the project. Bishop Morelos subsequently wrote to the Catholic Institute for International Relations stating that he did not, and does not, support the project. During the debate, the Minister acknowledged the widespread concern about human rights violations associated with the project, and ordered that there should be proper negotiations for improved human rights guarantees.
A month later, during the parliamentary recess, the Minister announced that the CDC loan to NGPI would go ahead. The agreement was signed despite the unchecked continuation of human rights violations. Several conditions were attached to the granting of the loan, one being that the Lost Command should be sacked and replaced by an independent security force. A new security force took over in May 1983, but the Lost Command has continued its association with the project.

Mr. Colin Moynihan: That is not true.

Mr. Canavan: The hon. Member for Lewisham, East (Mr. Moynihan) says that it is not true, but perhaps I can quote some examples. In April 1983, the Lost Command monopolised the sale of rice on the plantation. On 1 May 1983 the leader of the Lost Command, Colonel Carlos Lademora, was invited to give a talk at the third anniversary celebrations at the plantation. Between]. and 14 May the Lost Command was responsible for the murder of one plantation worker and the arrest and torture of eight others. In July, 12 farmers were gunned down by the Lost Command and other villagers evacuated the area, which was an expansion area in the plantation. On 6 January 1984 the new security force was disarmed by a force of unidentified men, and the Lost Command was seen on the plantation shortly before this event.
Hon. Members may argue that members of the Lost Command have now been integrated into the local


Philippines armed forces; but this, rather than curtailing its activities, has only legitimised them. There has been no attempt to bring any member of the Lost Command to trial, as far as I know, nor to compensate the families of the victims of its activities. Perhaps the Minister could tell us whether there are any plans in that direction.
The Commonwealth Development Corporation had effectively waived responsibility for the Lost Command's activities, which have been most apparent in the expansion areas of NGPI. In mid-1983, a new company was formed called NDC-Guthrie Estates Incorporated, or NGEI. This was to cover the second phase of expansion in an area of 4,000 hectares. The CDC says that its loan, and thus responsibility, is to NGPI and the 4,000 hectares already planted out to palm oil, not to NGEI. Numerous complaints have been received of harassment of farmers by the Lost Command in the area covered by NGEI.
Other conditions laid down by the CDC in the granting of the loan were fair employment practices, safe working conditions and a substantial out-growers scheme. There is no such out-growers scheme. Workers on NGPI receive only the minimum daily wage which, at the current exchange rates, is about £1 a day. I am informed that there is no trade union. Clearly, the conditions attached to the loan have not been met. In view of that, will the Minister say whether there are any plans to stop the drawdown on the loan or to ensure that the conditions will be met at a future date?
About 600 families, or 3,000 people, have so far been displaced by the plantation, and 150 heads of family have made legal representations to local lawyers for payment of compensation. How on earth can the Minister stand by the claim that he made in a letter of 17 November of last year to his hon. Friend the Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon (Mr. Patten) in which he said that nobody had been evicted, that all land had been acquired legally and by consent and that compensation had been paid for it?

Mr. Bowen Wells: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Canavan: No, I will not give way. This is my debate and I initiated it. If the hon. Gentleman wishes to make a point, I dare say that he will be able to use another opportunity to do so.
The CDC is currently negotiating a further investment in palm oil in a neighbouring area to that of NGPI called Loreto. This investment will be made in partnership with the National Development Corporation to develop a 5,000 hectare plantation and a 3,000 hectare outgrowers scheme. In July 1983, it flooded the area with comic propaganda—books in the local dialect—idealising its plans for the area. This propaganda literature was clearly intended to win the local population over to the idea that the takeover of their land by the corporation would be a good thing.
Between July and September, 25 letters containing more than 1,500 signatures were sent to Sir Peter Meinertzhagen asking the CDC not to invest in the area. These letters came from tribal people and settlers who farm the area and who do not want to lose their lands. Again, however, I am informed that these letters were ignored by the CDC.
The CDC says that much of the land in Loreto is uncultivated. Is the Minister aware that these so-called uncultivated areas are in fact farmed by the Manobo tribal

group who have inhabited the area for more than 400 years? The plantation, by taking away their lands, will have devastating effects on their culture. Is the Minister further aware that a tribal leader by the name of Datu Dwindi has been tricked into signing away 1,000 hectares of tribal land by a local military official? This is one of several allegations of land-grabbing in the Loreto area which would appear to refute the CDC claim that only land willingly sold will be bought. The situation arising from speculation in the area is clearly beyond its control.
Will the Minister answer a number of questions? For example, how much money do the Commonwealth Development Corporation propose to invest in the Lorato project? When does the Minister expect to receive the CDC proposal for this investment? What return does the CDC expect to receive from the investment? Is the Minister aware that there is a para-military group operating in Loreto serving the interests of the local mayor, who supports the CDC's plans for the area?
Last September a delegation from the parliamentary human rights group visited the Philippines. It consisted of my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Mr. Dubs) and the hon. Member for Lewisham, East (Mr. Moynihan), and I understand from their report that they returned satisfied that the CDC was meeting its obligations regarding the safeguarding of human rights. However, their visit was, understandably, of short duration and I believe that for at least part of the time they were the guests of, or were shown round by, representatives of the Philippine Government, the British Embassy and representatives of the CDC. I believe that they spent only one day in Loreto, where in the presence of an armed escort they met the local people. They were unable to meet leading human rights workers in the area, who feared being identified as opponents of the project following the recent death of the parish priest, who some believed in the area, rightly or wrongly, was killed by the Lost Command.
During the visit of the all-party human rights delegation, I am informed that 52 hectares of oil palms were slashed down on an NGPI plantation by peasants out of frustration at having no legal recourse for their protest against the corporation. Following the visit, NGPI workers who spoke with the Members of Parliament have been threatened and harassed by members of the Lost Command.
In May 1983, Michael Morgan, the British ambassador to the Philippines, reacted strongly to a letter which was written by a group of British volunteers reasonably protesting at the human rights violations taking place at NGPI. He threatened to withdraw the entire VSO programme from the Philippines. Will the Minister make it plain why a telex message was subsequently sent to Derek Nesbit, the local CDC representative, from the CDC management in London, wrongly advising him that one of the volunteers, Belinda Coote, was channelling information to CIRR regarding human rights abuses in connection with CDC's investments, and wrongly advising him of her work base? Will he say through which channels CDC received its information about this volunteer? Shortly after the incident the volunteer was denied a previously approved extension of her contract.

Mr. Alfred Dubs: My hon. Friend will appreciate that it is impossible, although I spent some time in the Philippines, to deal with the many points that he has made in a short intervention. Having been briefed, when


I set out to go to the Philippines, I was predisposed to come to the same conclusions about the CDC project in Loreto as those to which my hon. Friend has arrived. The evidence gained during my visit, albeit a short one—I was seven days in Mindanao—made me feel that it would be dishonest to come to any conclusions other than in line with those set out in the report. Experience in the Philippines made me change my mind, for my initial views were quite the opposite.

Mr. Canavan: I am not doubting the integrity of my hon. Friend or that of the Tory Member who accompanied him. However, I have presented certain evidence of which the members of the all-party delegation may not have been aware. There is evidence subsequent to their visit that people have apparently been threatened and harassed by members of the Lost Command. The members of the delegation must admit that their opportunities for collecting evidence to the extent that they would have liked was somewhat limited by the circumstances of their visit. Perhaps that was the result of circumstances which were beyond their control. Nevertheless, those were the circumstances.
The CDC came to be "Partners in Development" with their host countries. The partners that they speak of in this instance are the Philippine Government, the National Development Corporation arm of which has, since its inception in 1935, gained a notorious reputation for land grabbing and non-payment of compensation. Does the Minister seriously think that the Philippine Government, who have probably been responsible for assassinating the leader of the opposition; a Government who have no popular support, as shown by the recent surge in anti-Government demonstrations; a Government who have dislocated an estimated 500,000 in a so-called anti-insurgency drive; a Government who currently hold in excess of 2,000 political prisoners without trial and who cannot in any circumstances be relied upon to uphold human rights, are a fitting "Partner in Development"? By allowing this sort of aid to go to the Philippines, are we not propping up a corrupt and discredited regime?
If the CDC succeeds in investing in Loreto, other corporations such as Keck Seng, Dunlop and Boustead Holdings are expected to follow suit, with the result that 40,550 hectares of tribal land in Agusan del Sur will be turned over to plantation agriculture against the wishes and interests of the thousands of people who farm that area. Does the Minister seriously feel that this is an appropriate precedent to set with British taxpayers' money? I think it is not, and I speak as one who had consistently spoken in favour of increased overseas aid which will go to help deserving people in the Third world. In this instance, I do not believe that the necessary criteria are being fulfilled, and I therefore call for a complete and immediate withdrawal from all plantation investment schemes by the Commonwealth Development Corporation in the Philippines and an end to support for an anti-democratic and reviled regime.

The Minister for Overseas Development (Mr. Timothy Raison): The hon. Member for Falkirk, West (Mr. Canavan) has just taken up 20 minutes of the time available, and he will therefore understand that it may not be possible for me to answer immediately all his points.
It seemed to be sad that he should pick up pieces of tittle-tattle and use them in that way. He has no justification for talking about the sad death of Father Cesar Legaspi in that way. I understand that the bishop of the diocese has told the British ambassador that he has no reason to believe that that was anything other than an accident. It is wrong to make an innuendo without any basis. The essential point as far as the decision about the re-engagement of Miss Coote at the end of her contract was concerned was made by VSO and no pressure was put on her by the Government to reach that conclusion.
It is, as the hon. Gentleman reminded the House, just over a year since I replied to an Adjournment debate proposed by the hon. Gentleman on aid to the Philippines and the role of the Commonwealth Development Corporation in particular. As I said a year ago, we do not regard the treatment of human rights in the Philippines as beyond reproach. There are infringements of human rights in many countries, and these issues are all too often closely associated in particular with developing countries. Development is a long-term business, and no development more so than that in which the CDC is involved.
As the House knows, the CDC has made a lasting and in many ways a pioneering contribution to productive agricultural development in the widest sense. It would be wrong to suggest that it approaches its task of development in anything other than a serious spirit and with a genuine concern for the relief of the poverty and the true development of the people in the areas in which they work.
The hon. Gentleman attacked the old notion that we should be engaged in aid to the Philippines, but essentially we are talking about what can be done to help the poor people in a very poor part of that country. Authority for the CDC to operate in the Philippines was given by the then Minister of Overseas Development, the right hon. Lady the Member for Clydesdale (Dame J. Hart), and announced in Parliament in 1977 during the life of the last Labour Government.
Mindanao was already at: that time seen as being in greatest need of the kind of development the CDC could offer. Trees were being felled ruthlessly, with little attention to replacing the tree cover and conserving the soils. Shifting cultivation, particularly through immigration from other islands, had begun to aggravate the problem. While trying to identify suitable areas and local partners, the CDC committed a £5 million loan to the Private Development Corporation of the Philippines, designed to encourage that corporation to undertake more agricultural financing.
As the House is aware, in 1979 the National Development Company was designated as the agency to undertake large-scale agricultural development projects. In 1980 the then British Guthrie Overseas Holdings Ltd. signed a joint-venture agreement with NDC to develop an 8,000-hectare oil palm scheme in Agusan del Sur. [n May 1981, the joint company, the NDC/Guthrie Plantations Inc., approached CDC for finance. Agreements for a £6·4 million loan were finally signed in 1983 after my predecessor, Sir Neil Marten, following very careful investigation, had declared himself satisfied that there was no justification for him to withhold his consent.
I will not go over the history of what happened, because I made a full statement in the Adjournment debate a year ago, and time is short. I outlined then the undertakings that


CDC had negotiated with NGPI covering the installation of a new security force, the protection of employees from harassment and the conditions of employment generally.
I have been able to confirm that the new security force was installed on 16 May 1983, well ahead of the deadline agreed between CDC and NGPI. The raising and training of this force was closely monitored by CDC's representative in Mindanao, and he continues to monitor its muster and deployment as well as its new recruits. The British embassy in Manila has also kept me in close touch with developments.
NGPI has honoured its undertaking in all other respects, and CDC was able to make the first disbursement of its £6·4 million loan towards the end of August. A further disbursement is likely to be made before the end of the current quarter, which would leave an undrawn balance of somewhat over half the total amount. Disbursement of this balance continues to be subject to the observance of NGPI' s undertakings.
The hon. Gentleman mentioned trade unions. I gather that trade union elections were won by the Philippine Association of Free Labour Unions in 1982. The results were challenged in the courts which recently upheld the PAFLU's win. The way is therefore open for the establishment of a union on the estate. NGPI set up joint consultative committees pending the formation of a union.
The really important point, in addition to the safeguards which have been introduced to cover the rights of the people there, is that good physical progress has been made with the project.
Indications are that the quality of the palm is excellent and test harvesting is about to commence in preparation for commercial harvesting when the oil mill is commissioned in May. That will bring real benefit to the people of the area.
There have been allegations about the acquisition of land. I must make it clear that the CDC loan was not used for land acquisition, which was undertaken before CDC agreed to provide finance for other aspects of the project. Before CDC agreed to participate, it was informed that NGPI had introduced new scales of compensation for any genuine claimants whose land was previously acquired and who for any reason did not benefit from these scales.
These are considerations which CDC has very much in mind in preparing and planning for the second project in the Loreto area, known as NDC/CDC. CDC has been asked by NDC to be its joint-venture partner in this.
Having regard to the anxieties which had become evident during the NGPI development, CDC decided that its approach at Loreto should be based on consultation with the population who would be asked to co-operate with the project. CDC wished to ensure that people understood the project and had the information on which to make up their minds. Accordingly, it commissioned a firm of Philippine agricultural consultants with experience not just of communicating with small farmers, but of carrying out a World bank evaluation of an adjacent project in Mindanao, to conduct a programme to explain the objectives of the project. That took place during the second half of July 1983. It has been followed by studies that I cannot describe in detail, but I have no doubt that the result is a soundly-based project.
The project is not a plantation but is conceived as an outgrower project supported by a nucleus estate, and the survey showed that the attitude to this was strongly positive.
A CDC appraisal mission went to the area last November. The mission's findings will be considered by CDC's board in due course. Its decision will be put to me for investment approval in the ordinary way.
I am advised on the project by CDC as well as the embassy in Manila. They have taken great trouble about the matter. I have read with great interest the report by my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, East (Mr. Moynihan) and the hon. Member for Battersea, South (Mr. Dubs). The hon. Member for Falkirk, West tried to dismiss them as having had too little time to study what was going on. Their report, which was by no means uncritical—no one could say that it was a simple whitewash of everything that happened—pointed out matters in which they believed that things had gone wrong, but they gave assurances that the new Loreto project was something with which it was right to go ahead. They said:
We were impressed by the steps CDC has taken to consult the local population. More has been invested on pre-project communication than on any project in our experience.
Those interested in this matter should read that report, and I believe that, if they do, and take careful account of the facts that I have presented in summary form, they will find that the thoroughly tendentious picture presented by the hon. Gentleman is far from being the whole truth.

The Question having been proposed after Ten o'clock, and the debate having continued for half an hour, MR. DEPUTY SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.

Adjourned at twenty-five minutes to Twelve o'clock.